Notes related to Bienal

The 2024 edition of the Venice Biennale is coming to an end. Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Brazilian Adriano Pedrosa, offered a reflection through art about migration and borders, recurring themes in today's global discussion. Arte al Día was present to cover the 60th International Exhibition, not only to bring the work of more than 300 artists from almost 100 countries, but also to focus on the contribution of Latin American artists to the global scene, whose presence marked a high point in this edition.

The section dedicated to abstraction in the Strangers Everywhere / Stranieri Ouvunque exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2024 explores how artists from the Global South -particularly those from Latin America- pursued less rigorous forms, undulating lines and a vibrant color palette stemming from references of their own.

Under the general curatorship of Bonaventure by Soh Bejen Ndikung, the 36th São Paulo Biennial announces its title, curatorial concept, collaborators and visual identity, in addition to informing about an important change in its exhibition period. The title will be: Nem todo viandante anda estradas / Da humanidade como prática [Not All Travelers Walk Roads / Of Humanity as Practice].

The 2024 Venice Biennale has taken a profound interest on cyclical themes, with water emerging as a dominant motif across exhibitions. In resonance to Pedrosa’s title for this year ‘Stranieri Ovunque’, we see water as a dominant locus for the subjects of travel, shared heritage and fluctuation. On itself, water is seen (as both a vital resource and a destructive force) at the heart of the pavilions representing Greece, France, and in Otero Torres’ Arsenale installation, Aguacero. These exhibitions delve into water’s duality: as a life-giver and a potential destroyer, as a symbol of both division and connection.

Crisis Galería announced the recent acquisition of the painting Cosmovisión Huitoto (2022) by the outstanding indigenous artist Santiago Yahuarcani by the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA). This extraordinary large format work, made with natural dyes and acrylic paint on llanchama, is one of the largest produced by the artist with more than two meters high and four meters wide.

Disobedience Archive is a video archive project in constant transformation, linking artistic practices and political action. At the Venice Biennale exhibition, it takes the form of The Zoentrope, a pre-cinematographic machine that gives life to a space that generates new perspectives.

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.