The 60th Venice Biennale of Art: “Foreigners Everywhere”
In April, the Art Venice Biennale (April 20, 2024 to November 24, 2024) opened with its 60th International Art Exhibition: “Stranieri Ovunque” or “Foreigners Everywhere.” The hosting institution, La Biennale di Venezia, is one of the world’s most famous and distinguished cultural organizations and is also responsible for similar events for Theater, Dance, Music, Architecture, and Cinema. The Art Biennale cultivates a space for celebrating, educating, and exploring contemporary art, culture, social issues, and politics through a variety of media, ranging from sculptures and performances to installations, videos, and paintings. With 800,000 visitors during the previous Biennale, this season is expected to be just as popular and entertaining, signifying its status as one of the most highly regarded and prestigious contemporary art exhibitions.
What is it?
Alternating every other year between Architecture and Art main exhibitions, the Biennale consists of three central components.
The main International Exhibition around a central theme is organized by a specially designated Biennale curator each year, located in the Central pavilion’s gardens, Giardini, and in the former shipyard, Arsenale.
The National Pavilion exhibitions are each hosted by a different country with their own curator and usually align with the main exhibition theme, located in Giardini and off-site areas.
The Collateral Events are independently organized exhibitions officially approved and endorsed by the Biennale curator located in various locations around Venice. This year, there are 30 events selected by the curator hosted by 28 different international cities.
The Origins
On April 19, 1893, to mark the silver (25 year) anniversary of King Umberto I and Margherita of Savoy, the rulers of Italy at the time, Venice’s government commissioned a biennial national art exhibition. The first exhibition occurred on April 30, 1895 with over 200,000 in attendance, including the King and Queen, and hosted both Italian and foreign artists. From then on, the Biennale would continue to be an essential part of the art world and Venice and Italy’s economy and tourism.
The Curator
Adriano Pedrosa. Photo by Daniel Cabrel. Courtesy of Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand.
Adriano Pedrosa is the first Latin American Biennale curator and the first to be based in the Southern Hemisphere in the Biennale’s 130 year history; he is also the first openly queer Biennale curator. From Brazil, Pedrosa is the artistic director of the São Paulo Museum of Art where he has curated several exhibitions. Previously, he has served as a curator for other major exhibitions and Biennales, including the 24th and 27th Bienal de São Paulo (1998 and 2006), the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011), and the São Paulo pavilion at the 9th Shanghai Biennale (2012). In 2023, he received the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence from Bard College in New York.
The Theme and International Exhibition
This year’s theme is “Foreigners Everywhere” inspired by a series of works in 2004 by Claire Fontaine, a collective founded in Paris and now based in Palermo, Italy. The series, by the same name, features multiple various colored neon sculptures that say “Foreigners Everywhere” in 53 different languages, including indigenous and extinct ones. Inspired by the name of an early 2000s Turin anarchist collective that combated xenophobia in Italy, the works as well as the exhibition theme are a stand against racism and anti-immigrant efforts across countries worldwide, including the United States, Italy, and Hungary.
As Pedrosa Explains, “the expression ‘Foreigners Everywhere’ has several meanings. Firstly, wherever you go and wherever you are, you will always encounter foreigners—they/we are everywhere. Secondly, no matter where you find yourself, you are always truly, and deep down inside, a foreigner.”
There are two exhibition sections: the Nucleo Contemporaneo and the Nucleo Storico. Both spotlight diverse artists, amplifying voices and stories of marginalized groups, many of whom are participating in the Biennale for the first time or who have never exhibited in the International Exhibition before. While there is a wide variety of media across the Biennale and mixed media installations dominate the National Pavilions, “Foreigners Everywhere” largely features textiles, paintings, and sculptures.
The former exhibition section focuses on works by the queer artist, the outsider artist (those on the outskirts of the mainstream art world such as self-taught artists), the folk artist, and the indigenous artist many of whom have faced persecution or have felt like foreigners in their homelands. Nucleo Contemporaneo has a total of 110 artists featured.
The latter is a collection of 20th century works from Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa, addressing modernism in the Global South, a topic that has been largely underrepresented and examined. There are three rooms for this section: Portraits (112 artists), Abstractions (37 artists), and Italians Everywhere which focuses on 20th century artistic Italian diaspora (40 first or second generation Italian artists).
The National Pavilions and Participations
86 National Participations feature this year with four countries participating for the first time in the Biennale: United Republic of Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Timor Leste, Ethiopia, and Republic of Benin; and three countries are hosting their own pavillions for the first time: Senegal, Nicaragua, and the Republic of Panama.
Although there are a large number of pavilions across Venice, there are only 29 pavilions within the gardens, each built by different countries at different periods with different architectural styles and often by famous architects.
Edith Karlson: Hora lupi, Estonian pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024. Photo by Anu Vahtra/Estonian Centre for
Contemporary Art. Courtesy of the Estonian pavilion and La Biennale di Venezia.
Awards
Presented by a jury of five representatives from different countries, the awards ceremony took place on April 20, 2024. The Australian Pavilion won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. Curated by Ellie Buttrose and exhibited by Archie Moore, the pavilion titled kith and kin traces indigenous artist Moore’s family tree across 65,000 years. Moore hand-drew the incomplete family tree in chalk onto the pavilion's walls and ceiling, leaving the blanks for viewers to fill in. In the center of the room, piles of redacted official records float above water, demonstrating Moore’s research and large rate of indigenous incarceration.
The Republic of Kosovo earned the National Participation special mention. The Echoing Silences of Metal and Skin, curated by Erëmirë Krasniqi and exhibited by Doruntina Kastrati, displays several curved sculptures with shiny gold, rose-gold, or silver colored exteriors. Referencing the industrial labor induced wear of women’s bodies, the sculptures allude to the walnut shells used to produce Turkish delight as well as the medical implants that replace the knees of the Turkish delight manufacturers.
The Golden Lion for Best Artist in the International Exhibition went to the Māori indigenous New Zealand founded Mataaho Collective for their impressively large-scale woven structure that stretches across the gallery. The work honors the matrilinear traditions of textiles and weaving.
The Biennale awarded the Silver Lion for a Promising Young Participant in the International Exhibition to Nigerian raised artist Karimah Ashadu for her video Machine Boys and accompanying brass sculpture, Wreath, which both serve to overturn gender customs and expectations around the gaze. Through intimate footage of textures and surfaces, the video captures the vulnerability and challenges faced by illegal motorcycle taxi riders, known as okada, within Lagos, Nigeria. Echoing the video’s themes of commemoration, the sculpture, a golden circle relief of tyres, embodies a medallion.
Anna Maria Maiolino, born in Italy and living in Brazil, and Nil Yalter, born in Egypt and living in France, both received the Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement. As pioneer women, migrant, and self-taught artists, they represent the spirit of “Foreigners Everywhere” and are both first time participants in the Biennale. Over their careers, they have presented their work at numerous solo and retrospective exhibitions and museum collections.
Significance and Impact on Continuing Culture
As the largest Biennale yet with many first time artists and the first openly queer and Latin American curator, this year’s Venice Biennale demonstrates how the event continues to serve as an integral part of the art world, not only exhibiting the latest trends in contemporary art but also bringing people together and honoring new and diverse voices, stories, and histories. The organization’s commitment to be carbon neutral along with many installations and artists taking political stances within their works, either critiquing or offering hope for change, also illustrates how exhibitions and art are essential platforms and driving forces for social change and good, confirming how art will always be relevant.
About the Writer, Ava Schutze
Originally from Atlanta, Ava is a senior at Furman University in Greenville, studying Multimedia Storytelling. Along with traveling and reading, she also has interests in film, creative writing, and art history. She particularly loves photography, sculptures, architecture, and experimental and Pop Art.
After graduation, she plans to pursue storytelling in all of its many forms, using it for social good.
The Art Journal, by Stall Three Studio
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