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The Venice Biennale

60th International Art Exhibition

Foreigners Everywhere

Venice (Giardini and Arsenale) April 20 – November 24, 2024

BIENNALE ART 2024

The 60th International Art Exhibition, titled Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa and produced by the Venice Biennale, will be open to the public from Saturday, April 20 to Sunday, November 24, 2024, at the Giardini and the Arsenale. The pre-opening will take place on April 17, 18, and 19, and the awards ceremony and inauguration will be held on April 20, 2024.

Since 2021, the Biennale has embarked on a path of revisiting all its activities according to established and recognized principles of environmental sustainability. For 2024, the goal is to achieve "carbon neutrality" certification, achieved in 2023 for all activities planned by the Biennale: the 80th International Film Exhibition, the Theater, Music, and Dance Festivals, and particularly the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, which was the first major exhibition in this discipline to experiment with a tangible path toward carbon neutrality, reflecting on the themes of decolonization and decarbonization.

THE INTERNATIONAL CURATORIAL EXHIBITION

The Exhibition will be divided between the Central Pavilion at the Giardini and the Arsenale into two distinct sections: Contemporary Section and Historical Section.

As a guiding principle, Biennale Art 2024 has favored artists who have never participated in the International Exhibition, although some of them have already exhibited in a National Pavilion, a Collateral Event, or in a past edition of the International Exhibition. Special attention will be given to outdoor projects, both at the Arsenale and the Giardini, and to a performance program during the pre-opening days and the final weekend of the 60th Exhibition.

The title Foreigners Everywhere is taken from a series of works created since 2004 by the collective Claire Fontaine, founded in Paris and based in Palermo. These works consist of neon sculptures in various colors displaying the words "Foreigners Everywhere" in different languages. The phrase itself was taken from the name of a Turin-based collective that fought against racism and xenophobia in Italy in the early 2000s.

"The expression Foreigners Everywhere," explains Adriano Pedrosa, "has more than one meaning. Firstly, it implies that wherever you go and wherever you are, you will always encounter foreigners: they are/we are everywhere. Secondly, that regardless of one's location, one is always truly a foreigner deep down."

CONTEMPORARY SECTION

"The Italian term 'straniero,' the Portuguese 'estrangeiro,' the French 'étranger,' and the Spanish 'extranjero' are all etymologically connected to the words 'strange,' 'estranho,' 'étrange,' and 'extraño,' referring to the stranger. This brings to mind Das Unheimliche by Sigmund Freud, known as The Uncanny in the Italian edition, which in Portuguese was translated as 'o estranho,' the strange that is also familiar deep down. According to the American Heritage and Oxford English Dictionary, the primary meaning of the word 'queer' is 'strange,' so the Exhibition will focus on the production of further related subjects: the queer artist, who navigates different sexualities and genders and is often persecuted or banned; the outsider artist, who is on the fringes of the art world, such as the self-taught or so-called folk or popular artist; the indigenous artist, often treated as a foreigner in their own land. The production of these four subjects will be the core of this edition and will make up the Contemporary Section."

"Indigenous artists will have an emblematic presence, with their works welcoming the public in the Central Pavilion, featuring a monumental mural by the Brazilian collective Mahku on the facade of the building, and in the Corderie, where the Aotearoa/New Zealand collective Maataho will present a large installation in the first room. Queer artists will be present in every space and will form the core of an extensive section in the Corderie, as well as a dedicated area to queer abstraction in the Central Pavilion."

"The Contemporary Section will host a special section in the Corderie dedicated to Disobedience Archive, a project by Marco Scotini that has been developing a video archive focused on the relationship between artistic practices and activism since 2005. The presentation of Disobedience Archive in the Exhibition is designed by Juliana Ziebell, who also worked on the exhibition architecture of the entire International Exhibition. This section, divided into two main parts specially conceived for the Exhibition, titled Diaspora Activism and Gender Disobedience, will include works by 39 artists and collectives created between 1975 and 2023."

HISTORICAL SECTION

"The Historical Section consists of works from the 20th century from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Arab world. Much has been written about global modernisms and those from the Global South, which is why some rooms will feature works from such territories, creating a sort of essay, a draft, or a hypothetical curatorial experiment aimed at questioning the boundaries and definitions of Modernism. We know the history of Modernism in Euro-America too well, but the modernisms of the Global South remain largely unknown. [...] European Modernism itself traveled well beyond Europe throughout the 20th century, often intertwining with colonialism, just as many artists from the Global South traveled to Europe to exhibit their work. [...]”

The Historical Section will include three rooms in the Central Pavilion: a room titled Portraits, a room dedicated to Abstractions, and a third room dedicated to the Italian artistic diaspora worldwide throughout the 20th century.

"The two rooms featuring Portraits will include works by 112 artists, mostly paintings, but also works on paper and sculptures, spanning from 1905 to 1990. [...] The theme of the human figure will be explored in countless different ways by artists from the Global South, reflecting on the crisis of human representation that has characterized much of 20th-century art. In the Global South, many artists encountered European Modernism through travel, study, or books, while bringing their own personal and powerful reflections and contributions to their works [...]. The room dedicated to Abstractions will include 37 artists: almost all will be exhibited together for the first time in unexpected juxtapositions, hoping for new connections, associations, and parallels that go well beyond the rather simple categories I have proposed. [...]”

Among others, this section features artists from Korea and Singapore, who were formerly part of the so-called Third World, or historically significant Maori indigenous artists like Selwyn Wilson and Sandy Adsett from Aotearoa/New Zealand. [...]

A third room in the Historical Section will be dedicated to the diaspora of Italian artists who traveled and moved abroad, integrating into local cultures and building their careers in Africa, Asia, Latin America, as well as the rest of Europe and the United States; artists who often played a significant role in the development of Modernist narratives outside of Italy. This room will display works by 40 first- or second-generation Italian artists, housed in glass and concrete pedestal displays by Lina Bo Bardi (an Italian who moved to Brazil, awarded the Special Golden Lion in Memory at the Biennale Architecture 2021).”

“During the research – emphasizes Pedrosa – two distinct but related elements emerged quite organically, which have developed into the leitmotif of the entire Exhibition. The first is textiles, explored by many of the involved artists, from key figures in the Historical Section to many authors present in the Contemporary Section. [...] Such works reveal an interest in craftsmanship, tradition, and handmade aspects, as well as techniques that, in the broader field of fine arts, have sometimes been considered other or foreign, strange or alien. [...] A second element is represented by artists – many of whom are indigenous – connected by blood ties. [...] Again, tradition plays an important role: the transmission of knowledge and practices from father or mother to son or daughter or among siblings and relatives.”

STATEMENT BY ROBERTO CICUTTO

The President of the Biennale, Roberto Cicutto, recalled that “Adriano Pedrosa is the first curator of the Biennale Art from Latin America, chosen to bring his perspective on contemporary art by re-reading different cultures as if they were a cinematic counter-shot.”

“The international nature of the Biennale makes it a