59th Venice Biennale in 2022
melanie bonajo

Studio Philippe Karrer was commissioned by the artist melanie bonajo to develope a typgraphic animation for the 59th edition of the Venice Biennale in 2022. The animation reflects on bonajo’s ongoing research into the current status of intimacy in our increasingly alienating, commodity-driven world.

‘When the body says Yes’ is the new immersive video installation by melanie bonajo, commissioned by the Mondriaan Fund for the Venice Biennale 2022 (23 April–17 November 2022). For bonajo, touch can be a powerful remedy for the modern epidemic of loneliness. bonajo says: Love is not learned in isolation and, if you have felt it, someone else has probably felt it too. We created a collective spell in the form of a pleasure positive camp, an eco-erotic queer eros, celebrating our kin through skinship. A place of productive chaos and care, where we practiced touch tutorials, set boundaries, gave and received consent, drank our own poison at the trigger bar, did weird therapies and acknowledged feelings as valid…