The morning began with a steady drizzle, but we were undaunted.  The three of us walked over to Bisiol and then to the Coop to stock up on food.

Then off we went, over the Rialto Bridge and straight(ish) back into Santa Croce to find the Biennale exhibit by Swiss artist, Christopher Büchel, at the Fondazione Prada.  Initially it was difficult to recognize the building because it was decorated with signage typical of a pawn shop—We Buy Gold etc. I discovered that the title of the exhibit is Monte di Pietá, which translates as pawn shop

 We got our tickets and walked back a bit to the classic bacaro, Do Spade, for some cicchetti for lunch.  And…back to the show.  

This is a full experience. The themes are not uplifting:   human need, debt, pain, detachment and greed.   You enter into rooms filled with thousands of chaotically hoarded objects—old lockers chocked full of paperbacks, bottles and jars, bicycles, machine parts.  So much grim stuff!  Moving on we realize that there are different rooms, a court room, a typical living room including Star Wars pillows:

Each room held its own fascination.

There were lots of computers—small servers with colored fans and monitors with cheeky images.  

On the bridge-like mezzanine there was a blanket with counterfeit purses beside a big Ikea bag filled with selfie sticks, with some on display.

A downstairs room held religious symbols and another the ruins of a Palestinian museum. 

And these missiles:

It took us a long time to go through the rooms, process and discuss.  

We decided to try for one more show:  Cosmic Dreams by a team of two Indian artists. It was kind of the opposite of the previous show.  Full of joyful images and colors, I was really glad to see it.

Donna loved the stitched sculptures:

Ken at the paintings:

We had in interesting talk with the young woman attendant who was reading Lolita—about dirty old men artists.

Now we had to face the weather.  It was really raining by now and by the time we got home we were all pretty soaked, even with our rain jackets. We shared some tiramisu hoping it would be a literal “pick me up.”

We had a nice rest time and regathered for a feast of foods from Bisiol and some Prosecco.  We had three different kinds of lasagna as well as prosciutto and mortadella and the left over spinach and zucchini.  

I’m slightly bummed about the weather, but such is life and we have almost two more weeks here.