Venice Biennale? Decideldly not. Venetian Bi-ennial is an Art 25 investigation of portals and simulacra.

In the middle of the Las Vegas strip lies the Venetian Resort, a luxury casino and hotel owned by Vici Properties. Though the Venetian serves as a glamour—an obvious but diminutive imitation of a Venice, Italy, vacation—it, along with all properties in Las Vegas, lies on traditional Nüwüwü (Chemehuevi) and Nuwuvi (Southern Paiute) lands.

Part somatic poetry exercise, part invocation ceremony, the artists consulted Tarot cards created by Asian American Literary Review (AALR) for their project Open in Emergency. The project is described as “A little self-care (and anti-racist) magic! In the spirit of fortune-telling practices so prevalent in our communities, we’ve created a new deck of tarot cards, featuring original art and text that work to reveal the hidden contours of our Asian American emotional, psychic, and spiritual lives, as well as the systems of violence that bear down upon them.”

Based upon a dream depicting a reflective pool of black water and ancestors just beyond, the artists chose to interact with the Ancestor card, the text of which was created by Gerald Maa, co-founder of the AALR. Unlike other tarot cards, this one reads as a set of instructions, which the artists followed, as invocation. Beneath surfaces, beyond so-called prestigious, curated experiences, in spite of capitalistic excess and money-based recreation, what energies lie dormant, waiting for us to speak their names?

Resulting events in the weeks afterward were tumultuous, chaotic, and necessary for all the artists, though in idiosyncratic ways. What is apparent in the aftermath is that this project was a turning point—a portal revealed to force oneself to enter. And on the other side? Everything that comes next.