Video artist Angelica Mesiti has last word on Venice Biennale

Video artist Angelica Mesiti will make a new installation for the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Video installation artist Angelica Mesiti, who has been selected for the Venice Biennale. Picture: John Feder.

Video artist Angelica Mesiti has long been interested in unconventional and non-verbal methods of communication — from Morse code to long-distance whistling used in some Mediterranean cultures — but yesterday her message was direct.

“I’m on air, so very excited,” she said after being selected to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale contemporary art festival next year.

Mesiti, who grew up in Sydney and is now based in Paris, will make a new installation for the Australian Pavilion. She joins a distinguished gallery of Australian artists to show at Venice, ­including Bill Henson, Arthur Boyd, Rover Thomas and, last year, Tracey Moffatt.

Her appointment, announced by the Australia Council, is the first since contentious selection rules were introduced last year. The council invited artists to submit proposals to an expert panel chaired by artist and academic Callum Morton, ending what had been a closed process led by an ­independent commissioner.

The move prompted prominent art patrons Simon Mordant and Neil Balnaves to withdraw funding, saying it would produce a less than optimal exhibition.

Mesiti was selected from more than 70 submissions and a shortlist of five creative teams. She said she loved the “democratisation” of the selection process.

Exhibition curator Juliana Engberg said Mesiti’s Venice project would reflect the complexity of Australian society, its legislation, and “actions that challenge, revise and reinterpret those laws”. Mesiti’s work is on show at exhibitions in Denmark, the Adelaide Biennial and the National Gallery of Australia.

In previous video installations such as The Calling, The Colour of Saying and Nakh Removed, she has explored humanity’s capacity for non-verbal communication, including whistling, “singing” in sign language, and the Berber tradition of nakh or “hair dancing”.