Venice Art Biennale 2024: Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere
La Biennale di Venezia
Campo della Tanna, 2169/F – Venezia, Italy
April 20-November 24th, 2024
La Biennale di Venezia presents their 60th international art extravaganza, the Venice Art Biennale 2024. Titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, this biennial exhibit features 331 participants with works curated by Adriano Pedrosa. La Biennale di Venezia’s pre-opening is from April 17th-19th with the exhibit opening to the public on April 20th. The exhibition will take place in the Giardini, at the Arsenale, and at various other sites throughout Venice, Italy.
The Venice Biennale is one of the world’s biggest cultural events of the year with a wide variety of art and entertainment to offer to those familiar with its purview. “La Biennale’s international nature makes it a privileged vantage point from which to observe the state of the world through the transformation and evolution of the arts,” stated Roberto Cicutto, president of La Biennale di Venezia.
The 60th International Art Exhibition will be divided into two key parts: Nucleo Contemporaneo and Nucleo Storico. Both portions of this year’s Venice Biennale will celebrate the art of the foreign, the distant, the outside, queer, and the indigenous.
Nucleo Storico will highlight modernism, particularly art from 20th-century Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, while Nucleo Contemporaneo focuses on diverse international art. This portion of the exhibit will have a section on the Disobedience Archive, a project by Marco Scotini, which highlights the relationship between art and activism, splitting the exhibit between diaspora activism and gender disobedience.
The title of Foreigners Everywhere, as Pedrosa explains, draws from a series of works made by the Paris-born and Palermo-based collective Claire Fontaine since 2004. Strainieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere will consist of neon sculptures rendered in 53 languages to express the sentiment of “foreigners everywhere.” Portraits, abstractions, and even a section on Italian diasporic artistry in the 20th century will be featured at this international exhibition.
“In this panorama, the expression Foreigners Everywhere has several meanings. First of all, wherever you go and wherever you are you will always encounter foreigners—they/we are everywhere. Secondly, that no matter where you find yourself, you are always truly, and deep down inside, a foreigner,” stated Pedrosa, who’s also an artistic director of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand or MASP.
There are also two main leitmotivs throughout the exhibit: textiles and a family of artists. Textiles are seen in both portions of the international exhibit, with key historical figures such as Olga de Amaral, Eduardo Terrazas, and Monika Correa featuring textiles in Nucleo Storico. The other motif is family–or families of artists, or artists related by blood, including many Indigenous artists like Andres Curruchich and his granddaughter, Rosa Elena from Guatemala, and Abel Rodriguez and his son Aycoboo from Colombia.
At the exhibit, the two artists Anna Maria Maiolino and Nil Yalter will be awarded the Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement, and they will be inaugurated on April 20th at Ca’ Giustinian, La Biennale di Venezia Headquarters. La Biennale di Venezia has selected four projects for the 2nd edition of Biennale College Arte 2023/2024. With over 150 young artists to choose from, the four finalists are Agnes Questionmark, Joyce Joumaa, Sandra Poulson, and Nazira Karimi, who will each receive a grant of $25,000 for the realization of their final work, as stated on the gallery’s website.
There are also 30 projects chosen by Pedrosa as the Collateral Events, which will be located in several locations such as Bangkok, Barcelona, Hong Kong, London, New York, Palestine, and others. Some of the projects, most with working titles, are Above Zobeide, All African Peoples’ Consulate, Anchor in the Landscape, and many more, as listed on La Biennale di Venezia’s official website.
True to its message, the Venice Art Biennale will include numerous international artists. Some of the invited artists include Pacita Abad, Mariam Abdel-Aleem, Etel Adnan, Sandy Adsett, Affandi, Zubeida Agha, Dia al-Azzawi, Claudia Alarcón & Silät, Rafa al-Nasiri, Miguel Alandia Pantoja, Aloïse, Giulia Andreani, Claudia Andujar, María Aranís Valdivia, Aravani Art Project, and hundreds more.
