Hillary Clinton Went to a Venice Exhibition Presenting Thousands of Her Own Emails—and She Sat Down and Read Them

Earlier this week, while on a trip to Venice, Hillary Clinton
made time to visit some of the many art
shows on view during the Venice Biennale.

But one exhibition especially caught her
attention: “HILLARY: The Hillary Clinton Emails,”
an presentation made up entirely of a trove of her leaked emails
published by WikiLeaks, and downloaded and printed by artist
and poet Kenneth Goldsmith.

The artist was shocked by her surprise visit. A Clinton
representative had reached out to the exhibition’s organizers
before their arrival, but Goldsmith assumed they were joking. “I
didn’t believe it until she came,” he told artnet News, adding that
“never in a million years” had he imagined she would stop by.

But as unlikely as it might seem, Clinton spent an hour at the
show on Tuesday with members of the curatorial team, who
gave the former senator, First Lady, and Secretary of State a tour
of the exhibition. (Goldsmith was already back in New York at the
time.)

The show features a replica of the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk, where visitors can sit and
sift through 60,000 pages of Clinton emails. Yet despite the many
headlines the emails generated when they were first leaked, “they
are just so boring,” Clinton said to the curators after visiting
the show.

“This exhibition is further proof that nothing wrong or
controversial can be found in these emails,” she said. “It makes
them accessible to everyone and allows everyone to read them.”

Found my emails at the Venice Biennale.
Someone alert the House GOP. pic.twitter.com/eeXaKhy9Dz

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 12, 2019

Following the visit, Clinton tweeted a photograph of herself
with the printed emails and included a sly message: “Found my
emails at the Venice Biennale. Someone alert the House GOP.”

Emails sent and received on Clinton’s private server during her
time at the State Department became a major issue in the 2016
presidential campaign. Her opponent, Donald Trump, even called
on Russian hackers to make the emails public. An FBI investigation
found that while Clinton had been careless in using an unsecured
private server for official governmental business, she had not
broken any laws.

But days before the election, FBI director James Comey announced
that new emails were the subject of another inquiry. The issue is
widely believed to have helped sway the election in Trump’s
favor.

“It was one of the strangest, most absurd events in American
political history,” Clinton told Italian press after leaving the
exhibition. She compared the Venice exhibition to her
book, What Happened, which also aims to explain why
the email issue was such a controversy.

Hillary Clinton spent an hour yesterday
reading her emails at my exhibition of all 62,000 pages of them in
Venice. She is pictured here at a replica of the Oval Office
Resolute Desk, stacked with her emails. pic.twitter.com/V8T27klycr

— Kenneth Goldsmith (@kg_ubu) September 11, 2019

For Goldsmith, having Clinton personally experience the show she
inspired is a dream come true.

“It’s incredible. It completes the circle, fulfills the
proposition,” he says. “It’s almost as if the exhibition was
waiting for her. After her visit, the show has turned into the
major statement of the Biennale.”

The show is a collateral event for the Biennale staged by
Venice’s Zuecca Projects at a Venetian
grocery store that once housed a movie theater.

Kenneth Goldsmith’s “HILLARY: The Hillary Clinton Emails” is
on view at Despar Teatro Italiano, Campiello de
l’Anconeta, 1944, 30121 Venezia, May 9–November 24,
2019.

The post Hillary Clinton Went to a Venice Exhibition
Presenting Thousands of Her Own Emails—and She Sat Down and Read
Them appeared first on artnet News.