All photos by Caroline Claisse unless otherwise noted.

Representing the United States in the Venice Biennale 2011 is artist duo Allora & Calzadilla. Based in Puerto Rico, the real-life couple Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla‘s work is deeply political, though they would have you think otherwise.

The exhibition, entitled “Gloria,” features six newly commissioned works. It is curated by Lisa Freiman, chair of the contemporary art department at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the institution the U.S. State Department entrusted with the selection. The organizing committee is the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. Previous representatives of the U.S. are Bruce Nauman (2009) who won the Golden Lion for his country, Felix Gonzalez-Torres (2007), Ed Ruscha (2005), and Fred Wilson (2003).

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Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on “Ode to Joy” for a Prepared Piano, 2010. Via Initart Magazine

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on “Ode to Joy” for a Prepared Piano (2008) is the MoMA’s current installment in their Performance Exhibition Series. The duo prepared a Bechstein baby grand by cutting a hole through the center of the piano, rendering two octaves unusable. The pianist stands in the space and leans over the front of the piano to play the keyboard upside down and backwards. While playing the Fourth Movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, commonly known as “Ode to Joy,” the pianist walks the wheeled piano around the performance space.

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