Foreigners Everywhere: Biennale Arte 2024

From Saturday 20 April to Sunday 24 November, 2024, the 60th International Art Exhibition takes place in Venezia.

Source: Biennale Venezia · Image: Biennale 2022. Pavillon of Belgium. Exhibition of children’s games. Image by Wolfgang Sauber, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Biennale_Venedig_-_Pavillon_Belgien_3.jpg

The 60th International Art Exhibition will be entitled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere. The title is taken from a series of works created since 2004 by the Claire Fontaine collective, which was born in Paris and is based in Palermo. The works consist of neon sculptures of various colours bearing the words ‘Foreigners Everywhere’ in different languages. The expression was in turn taken from the name of a collective of the same name from Turin that was fighting racism and xenophobia in Italy in the early 2000s.

Curator Adriano Pedrosa explains his choice as follows:

“The context in which the work is set is a world full of multifarious crises that affect the movement and existence of people within countries, nations, territories and borders and that reflect the risks and pitfalls hidden within language, its possible translations and nationality, expressing differences and disparities conditioned by identity, citizenship, race, gender, sexuality, freedom and wealth. In this panorama, the expression ‘Foreigners Everywhere’ has (at least) a double meaning. Firstly, it means that wherever you go and wherever you are, you will always meet foreigners: they are/we are everywhere. Secondly, that regardless of one’s location, deep down one is always truly foreign.”

For his part, President Roberto Cicutto said:

“Adriano Pedrosa is a Brazilian curator and director of the MASP, a São Paulo museum built by Italian-born architect Lina Bo Bardi. He stood out for his originality and innovation, anticipating themes and curatorial lines later followed by other exhibitions around the world. Changing the point of view through which contemporary art is told, I believe, is what an institution of international importance such as La Biennale di Venezia must do. And here we are not only talking about an aesthetic point of view but also a geographical one, like when at the cinema the same scene is filmed in the opposite field.