Volume 0:

Two Native American Artists and Venice’s Renaissance (with Zuecca Projects for Venice Biennale 2019)

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Volume 0 is a post-hoc reflection on the relationship between Europe and Native North America, from the perspective of Venice, the city that helped popularise knowledge about American peoples through its abundant publications since the Renaissance. The pivotal work of Giambattista Ramusio De le Navigationi et Viaggi (Venice 1556) was taken as the starting point of a three-way conversation between Nadia Myre (Anishinabe), Alan Michelson (Mohawk), and Ramusio himself. The space of the exhibition offered the artists the opportunity to metaphorically write an ideal ‘Volume 0’ of Ramusio’s magnus opus including Native perspectives, which are notably absent in the original publication. This gesture of anthropological re-scripture, while addressing the value assigned to written traditions and oral cultures, responded with provocative vigour to the current re-evaluation of indigenous knowledge-making.