The 2024 Venice Biennale of Art will be titled "Foreigners Everywhere" and will be "a celebration" of the 'outsider', of what comes from outside, through artists "who are themselves foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, exiles, refugees ".
The announcement was made yesterday by the biennial's curator, Adriano Pedrosa, in Italy, who also listed queer expressions, "often persecuted or proscribed", and artists "on the margins of the art world", such as indigenous people.
The theme of the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, in Italy - "Foreigners Everywhere" -, which will take place between April 20th and November 24th, 2024, was announced at a joint press conference by the president of the biennale, Roberto Cicutto, and the curator appointed by the organization, Adriano Pedrosa, artistic director of the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP).
Adriano Pedrosa indicated that the theme of the next art biennale has "at least a double meaning". "Firstly, it means that, wherever you go and wherever you are, you will always encounter foreigners - they are everywhere", said the curator, immediately switching to the first person plural: "We are in everywhere".
Thus, he continued, "it means that, regardless of where we find ourselves, deep down we are always truly foreigners." Adriano Pedrosa highlighted that the international art biennial will be the stage for the production of "artists who are themselves foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diasporics, emigrants, exiles and refugees, especially those who moved between the global south and north".
The figure of the foreigner will be associated with that of the outsider, the strange and, therefore, according to the curator, "the exhibition will develop and focus on works by other related people: the queer artist, who moves between different sexualities and genders and is often persecuted or proscribed; the outsider artist, who finds himself on the margins of the art world, as well as the self-taught and indigenous artist, who is often treated as a foreigner in his own land".
The title of the 60th Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition - "Foreigners Everywhere" - comes from a series of works begun in 2004 by the collective Claire Fontaine, born in Paris, and based in Palermo, Italy.
The works consist of neon sculptures in different colors that reproduce, in an increasing number of languages, the words "Foreigners Everywhere". The phrase, in turn, originates from the name of a Turin collective, Stranieri Ovunque, which fought against racism and xenophobia in Italy in the early 2000s, recalled Pedrosa.
The international exhibition - he said - will also feature a Historical Center that will bring together works from Latin America, Africa, the Arab World and Asia from the 20th century, and a special section dedicated to the Italian artistic diaspora, with Italian artists who traveled all over the world, developing careers in Africa, Asia, Latin America, as well as the rest of Europe, integrating into local cultures.
These artists "often played significant roles in the development of Modernist narratives beyond Italy", detailed the Biennale's first Latin American curator.
"The Biennale itself - an international event with numerous official participations from different countries - has always been a platform for the exhibition of works by artists from all over the world," he added.
Asked about the size of the representation of Brazilian artists, Adriano Pedrosa did not indicate numbers or names, "because the exhibition is still in the preparation process", but said that there will be "many artists from Latin America, since Brazil and Argentina have the largest diaspora Italian in the world".
Adriano Pedrosa also said that the Venice International Art Exhibition will have approximately the usual number of artists, around 200, in addition to national participation, with their own exhibitions in the Giardini and Arsenale Pavilions, as well as in the historic center of the city.
The second edition of College Arte will also take place, for young emerging artists under 30, starting next autumn, which could lead to the exhibition, at the end of the process, of up to four new projects.
Adriano Pedrosa was assistant curator of the São Paulo Art Biennial in 1998 and its co-curator in 2006, curator of exhibitions and collections at the Pampulha Art Museum in Belo Horizonte (2000-2003).
The 2024 Art Biennial program will be presented next February.
Source: Culturaaominuto