The official statement for the Biennale’s upcoming 60th edition theme has been released. Read the Article to discover more!
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This upcoming 2024 Venice Biennale is soundly in its works as on June 22, 2023 the concept of the renowned international art even set forth. President of la Biennale di Venezia, Roberto Cicutto, and Brazilian Curator of the 2024 Art Exhibition, Adriano Pedrosa, have announced the new theme Stranieri Ovunque (Foreigners Everywhere), which focuses on artists who remain foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, exiled, and refuges.
The title, Foreigners Everywhere, comes from a series of works introduced in 2004 by artist collective Caire Fontaine, founded in Paris but currently based in Palermo. The phrase Stranieri Ovunque, was in turn born in the 2000s from a Turin collective that rose against racism and xenophobia with their activist efforts. This gives inspiration to the new theme, which mentioned by Pedrosa addresses ‘multiple crises concerning the movement and existence of people across countries, nations, territories, and borders, which reflect the perils and pitfalls of language, translation, ethnicity [in] expressing differences and disparities conditioned by identity, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, wealth, and freedom.’
The 2024 Art Biennale’s theme also has a dual meaning for Pedrosa, as it suggests that ‘wherever you go, 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.’ This in turn gives the floor to artists to give their take on the status of ‘foreigner’, and its association with the stranger, the queer, the outsider, and the indigenous, who have throughout time experienced persecution, marginalization, or displacement. This will make up the International Exhibition’s Nucleo Contemporaneo.
The exhibit will also feature a Nucleo Storico, delving into works from 20th century Latin America, Africa, Aisa, and the Arab world. It will also take on the Italian artistic diaspora, which consists of Italian artists that traveled the world abroad and developed significant roles in shaping the narratives surrounding modernism internationally.
In the Venice Art Biennale 2024 presentation, Pedrosa mentioned he will be the first Latin American curator to curate the Biennale. He also happens to be the artistic director of Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand. His exhibits explore sexuality, childhood, Afro-Atlantic, and feminist histories. Cicutto notes that Pedrosa is ‘known for the competence and originality he has shown in conceiving his exhibitions with a vision open to the contemporary, working from an observation point of the world that cannot disregard the nature of its place of origin.’ This sets the tone for the forthcoming exhibit. The Biennale has featured artists from South American origins in the past, but for the first time these artists will be welcomed by a curator that as stated by Cicutto ‘has roots in the same culture and has developed a global outlook over the years.’
The event is scheduled to take place on April 20 to November 24, 2024.
Cover Image: La Biennale, Venice. Courtesy of Unsplash
Written by: Isabella Pirro
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