STORIES FROM THE SOUTH – THE VENICE BIENNALE TURNS AROUND ITS AXIS

With a consciousness that does not categorize or hierarchize, the stories unfold through the spaces of the Arsenale and Giardini. Fundamental questions are posed: Which stories are to be exhibited and how are they formulated? The compositions, which range from detailed depictions of local stories to symbolically charged worldviews, expand the dialogue on micro-politics of change onto the global stage. 

Because Adriano Pedrosa opened a portal: by highlighting stories from the Global South, the exhibition not only presented new narratives, but also provoked critical reflection on how these stories are told and, most importantly, who has the power to tell them. 

Among the figurative works that inhabit the periphery of the art world, the Amazon stands out. Paintings such as those by Abel Rodríguez, trained among Nonuyas in the Colombian Amazon, reveal the profound biological and philosophical knowledge of these populations, through their detail and interconnectivity. The mural by the MAHKU collective (Movimento dos artistas Huni Kuin) on the façade of the central pavilion in the Giardini traces the myth of the kapewe pukeni and reflects on the (dis)connection between cultures. The drawings, patterns and colors of this mural make visible the rhythm of artistic but above all social conventions of a platform like the Biennale and of the general behavior of the art world. The mural seems to bring confluence in the face of conflict, and fluidity to confrontation. 

Yahuarcani's impressive paintings and compositions allude to the inhabited, memorial, conflictive, mythical, diverse, luminous and cyclical Uitoto territory. The narrative in these works is impossible to ignore, and they propose ways of living that promote synergy rather than rapture. From Haiti, Sénèque Obin (1893-1977) uses figuration to question and combat the label of the “primitive”. He articulates complex Haitian cultural events and illustrates powerful religious syncretism to show a personal and local perspective to the processes of modernity such as extractivism and homogenization. 

The mural Diaspore, commissioned for the Biennale from Aravani Art Project (Bengalore, India), seeks to denaturalize the binary of gender and its consequent social constructions to express, in vibrant colors and multiple figurations, the possible expressions of gender and identity. La Chola Poblete, for her part, exhibits drawings and paintings where hybridization is the protagonist of the decolonizing process through a trans-indigenous lens. In her use of pop symbols, “modernized” iconographies of the Virgin, and Andean motifs, La Chola politicizes the personal beyond the politicization of art. 

In Chile, the Bordadoras de la Isla Negra and the Arpilleristas use textiles as a means to narrate the daily life and challenges of a community. In the midst of the Pinochet dictatorship, the textiles offer an intimate vision of resistance and remembrance. The embroidery of the Bordadoras de la Isla Negra was stolen and disappeared in September 1973, after the Pinochet dictatorship took over the building that commissioned the work –the headquarters of the Third Session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD III)– as its center of operations. The work reappeared in August 2019. The Arpilleristas documented women's experiences, emotions and struggles during the oppressive regime.

Bolivian photographer River Claure challenges traditional notions of documentary photography by infusing his images with elements of fiction and performativity. Claure reimagines photography as a dynamic medium that can tell stories beyond apparent reality. He questions the ways in which identities and landscapes are represented, specifically Andean mining communities, traversed by centuries of colonial extractivism. Exposing these stories implies playing, reimagining, rewriting the past and thinking about a new future. It is the revenge for those who had no voice.

Strangers Everywhere / Stranieri Ouvunque presents several layers of discourse, a kind of visual cacophony that challenges and re-configures the conversation. The figurative becomes a means to amplify, to tell a scenario of change. And this juxtaposition confronts crucial questions: Are these works limited to the popular? Do they reflect exoticist practices? Or do they redefine the value of the folkloric by integrating it into a scenario that has historically marginalized it? Beyond the politicization of art, the goal seems to be to reconfigure figurative “fashion” to empower a conversation that transcends the intellectual circle of art to a more mainstream, inclusive and global scale.

In this way, the representations of these narratives, often fragmented or silenced, become powerful tools for cultural participation and the construction of memory. These images, far from revictimizing, seek to recognize, heal and build bridges towards a new way of understanding history and the present.

Can the symbolic order of domination be truly destabilized? It is debatable, but what is undeniable is that a great step has been taken towards a necessary and urgent conversation.