Biennale seeing more women

A Nigerian art critic and museum director is the first African to curate the Venice Biennale contemporary art fair that opened on Saturday for its seven-month run, while female artists are representing more countries than ever in national pavilions - trends seen as an informal rebalancing in the art world.

There's Joan Jonas for the United States, Fiona Hall for Australia, Irina Nakhova for Russia, Sarah Lucas for the United Kingdom, Chiharu Shiota for Japan, Pamela Rosenkranz for Switzerland and Camille Norment for Norway. And those women are all from the more established biennale participants in the Giardini, around one-third of the 89 national pavilions.

The prominence of women in the national pavilions - which along with the main show curated by Okwui Enwezor comprise the 56th International Art Exhibition - may be coincidence. Still, the force of the female numbers is gaining notice as somehow tapping into a zeitgeist and challenging the notion of the art world as being male dominated.