Notes related to Bienal

The Mexico Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024 proposes an immersive experience that invites the viewer to reflect on the act of migrating and its impact on identity and sense of belonging. As we marched away, we were always coming back is Erick Meyenberg's project curated by Tania Ragasol. It includes elements created in Mexico, Italy and Albania.

Why highlight stories that often remain on the periphery of artistic discourse? Adriano Pedrosa justifies his curatorial decision with works by 331 artists -mostly from the global south- that open the way to powerful narratives. Finally, we see the axis being twisted. It is difficult to escape the white gaze, more so to move authentically through a Eurocentric space. Given this, the communicative reach of figuration serves to challenge the symbolic order of domination and destabilize the colonial project. The stories that are made explicit and the narratives of magic and everyday life help to recognize without revictimizing. 

The voices of Latin American artists emerge strongly in this 2024 edition of the Venice Biennale. Claudia Alarcón, Julia Isídrez and Juana Marta Rodas, Ana Segovia, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger and Claudia Andújar lead viewers on a profound journey through their cultural heritage and unique artistic practices.

It takes an Island to Feel this Good is Darja Bajagić’s exhibition for the Montenegro pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024. Curated by Ana Simona Zelenović and organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Montenegro at the initiative of commissioner Vladislav Šćepanović, the exhibition will present a critical consideration of the culture of collective memory and the relationship to shared historical heritage.

The monumental commission by British artist John Akomfrah RA for the 2024 Venice Biennale is a multi-layered exhibition which encourages visitors to experience the British Pavilion’s 19th century neoclassical building in a new way.

Engaging with the theme of Adriano Pedrosa’s main exhibition for the Venice Biennale, Stranieri Ovunque—Foreigners Everywhere, Vlatka Horvat’s project for the Croatian Pavilion by the Means at Hand, curated by Antonia Majaca, exists as an accumulative exhibition of artworks by a wide-ranging group of international artists living as “foreigners,” reflecting on questions and urgencies of the diasporic experience.

The title of the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia, "Stranieri Ovunque", refers, in part, to foreignness as the inherent nature of the subject. Understood in this way, the national pavilions of Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom exhibit artistic proposals that develop the theme of colonialism and reconstruct histories, remedy ties between identity and territory, and explore the dramatic plurality of this potent historical axis. That said, this review does not intend to unveil or unpack the most unjust transcendental truths, but merely to reflect on the musings of others.

The Mongolian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale presents artist Ochirbold Ayurzana with the exhibition Discovering the Present from the Future. The proposal is curated by Oyuntuya Oyunjargal, the Cultural Envoy of Mongolia to Germany, and co-curated by Gregor Jansen, director of the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in Germany.

The Panama Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Art Biennale arises as a profound reflection on the enduring traces that migration leaves on individuals and their surroundings. Entitled Traces: On the Body and on the Land, this exhibition echoes the current migration crisis with a particular focus on the Panamanian context, interpreted by four artists through drawings, paintings, collages, glass sculptures, and installations.

Spanish-Peruvian artist Sandra Gamarra Heshiki represents Spain at the Venice Biennale. It is the first time in 60 editions that an artist not born in Spain does so. Her project Pinacoteca migrante (Migrant gallery), questions colonial narratives and historical modes of representation.

The Ukranian Pavilion addresses the othering effect of war, two years into the Russian Invasion, in Net Making at the 60^th Venice Biennale.

The eighty-first edition of the Whitney Biennial—the longest-running survey of contemporary art in the United States—features seventy-one artists and collectives grappling with many of today’s most pressing issues.

The exhibition of the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale - Stranieri Ovunque (Foregneirs Everywhere) - curated by Brazilian Adriano Pedrosa, presents 331 artists, significantly more than the usual number. More than a third of those artists come from Latin America.

Xirómero / Dryland is an interdisciplinary collective work conceived by Thanasis Deligiannis and Yannis Michalopoulos, created along with the artists Elia Kalogianni, Yorgos Kyvernitis, Kostas Chaikalis and Fotis Sagonas for the Greek Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. The project is curated by Panos Giannikopoulos.

For the 60th International Venice Biennale, Nemes designed the project as an immersive, painting-based Gesamtkunstwerk that expands the genre of painting and extends it to other media. Project curated by Róna Kopeczky.

For the 60th International Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia Stranieri Ovunque (Foregneirs Everywhere), artist Claudia Alarcón and art-collective Silät are presenting their reflections on being treated as foreigners in their own country.

The International Celebration of Blasphemy and The Sacred is a presentation by Congolese artist collective Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC) for the Dutch Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale.

For the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, the Nordic Countries Pavilion invites the audience to embark on a journey aboard a spectral dragon ship which occupies the light and open architecture of Sverre Fehn’s meditative masterpiece in the Giardini of the Biennale, Venice.

The Georgian Pavilion in the 60^th Venice Biennale presented The Art of Seeing– States of Astronomy, a collaborative project presented by a team of Georgian and French curators and artists.

Due qui / To Hear is the project for the Italian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale Curated by Luca Cerizza (with the assistance of Francesca Verga), it presents work that Massimo Bartolini has created in collaboration with several musicians (for the permanent installations) and writers (for the public program), employing the cooperative approach that is a hallmark of his practice.

Maria Madeira is the artist representing Timor-Leste at the 60th International Venice Biennale. Timor-Leste’s inaugural pavilion coincides with the country’s 25th anniversary of independence. Commissioned by the Ministry of Youth, Sports, Arts and Culture, Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste and curated by Professor Natalie King OAM.

The Venice Bienanale’s Swiss Pavilion presents Super Superior Civilizations: an exhibition with the sixth and seventh chapters of Guerreiro do Divino Amor’s monumental “Superfictional World Atlas” saga: The Miracle of Helvetia and Roma Talismano. Curated by: Andrea Bellini.

For the 60th Venice Biennale, the Republic of Armenia presents Echo, a multi-dimensional multi-media installation project by Paris-based Armenian artist Nina Khemchyan.

Ojalá se derrumben las puertas (Hopefully the Doors Will Fall Down) by artist Luciana Lamothe, curated by Sofía Dourron, is the installation presented by the Argentine Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale 2024.

The heart of a giraffe in captivity is twelve kilos lighter tells the story of Lenka the giraffe, drawing on the history of Czechoslovakia’s acquisition of animals from the Global South. Interpreted through contemporary ecological and decolonial perspectives, Eva Kotátková’s project of the Czech and Slovak Republic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale builds a space for imagining a different way of relating to nature.

The Japan Foundation, the commissioner of the Japan Pavilion presents Compose, a solo exhibition created by Yuko Mohri and curated by Sook-Kyung Lee at the 60^th International Venice Biennale.

Commissioned by Facundo de Almeida and curated by Elisa Valerio, the national pavilion of Uruguay presents the work of Eduardo Cardozo with the project Latent.

A Comparative Dialogue Act, a project by the Luxembourgish artist Andrea Mancini and the multidisciplinary collective Every Island is representing the Luxembourg Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale.

A week away from its official opening, the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale has generated press urbi et orbi. While some articles celebrated the irruption of the Global South in the Arsenale and the Giardini, others -truly devastating- reported on the disturbance and discomfort that the proposal of Adriano Pedrosa -the first Latin American to cure La Biennale in more than a century of existence- has awakened in the Western art system.

Argentine artist La Chola Poblete received a special mention at the Venice Biennale 2024, selected together with artist Samia Halaby.