Venice Biennale 2024 will be dedicated to foreigners: it will be titled Foreigners Everywhere

The 2024 Venice Biennale will be dedicated to foreigners . The theme and title of the 60th edition of the world’s most important contemporary art exhibition were announced today by the president of the Venice Biennale, Roberto Cicutto, and the curator of the next edition, Adriano Pedrosa The Biennale will take place from April 20 to November 24, 2024 (pre-opening April 17, 18, 19) at the Giardini, Arsenale and various venues in Venice, and will be titled Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere.

The title is taken from a series of works created since 2004 by the Paris-born, Palermo-based collective Claire Fontaine. The works consist of neon sculptures of various colors 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.

Adriano Pedrosa explains his choice as follows: “The context in which the work is set is a world full of multifaceted crises that affect the movement and existence of people within countries, nations, territories and borders and that reflect the risks and pitfalls that lurk withinwithin language, its possible translations and nationality, expressing differences and disparities conditioned by identity, citizenship, race, gender, sexuality, freedom and wealth. In this landscape, the expression Strangers Everywhere has (at least) a twofold meaning. First, it is meant to imply that wherever one goes and wherever one is, one will always encounter foreigners: they are/we are everywhere. Second, that regardless of one’s location, deep down one is always truly a foreigner. [...] At the Art Biennale 2024, we will be talking about artists who are themselves foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diasporics, émigrés, exiles and refugees, particularly those who have moved between the global South and North.”

“The figure of the foreigner will be associated with that of the stranger, the estranho, the étranger, and therefore the Exhibition will develop and focus on the works of additional related subjects,” Pedrosa continues: “the queer artist, who moves within different sexualities and genders and is often persecuted or banned; the outsider artist, who is on the margins of the art world, much like the self-taught or so-called folk artist; and the indigenous artist, who is often treated as a stranger in his own land. The production of such artists will be the focus of the Art Biennale and will constitute the Contemporary Core of the Exhibition. [...] The Exhibition will also present a Historical Core composed of 20th-century works from Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Arab world. [...] In addition, a special section of the Historical Core will be dedicated to the diaspora of Italian artists around the world during the 20th century. To those Italians who traveled and moved abroad building their lives and professional careers in Africa, Asia, Latin America, as well as in the rest of Europe, integrating and rooting themselves with local cultures that often played a significant role in the development of narratives of Modernism outside Italy.”

“The Biennale Arte itself, as an international event with numerous official participations from different countries,” Pedrosa concludes, “has always been a platform to showcase works by foreigners from all over the world. Thus, the Biennale Arte 2024 will be a celebration of the foreign, the faraway, the outsider, the queer and the indigenous. We hope to welcome them all to Venice in 2024.”

“Adriano Pedrosa,” said President Cicutto, “is a Brazilian curator and director of 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 to narrate contemporary art, I believe, is what an institution of international relevance like La Biennale di Venezia must do. And here it is not only an aesthetic point of view but also a geographical one, like when at the cinema you film the same scene in a reverse shot. This is the 60th edition of the International Exhibition of Contemporary Art in the 128-year span since the first, and never before has there been a curator or curator from a Latin American country. The participation of South American women artists in the Biennale has always been plentiful. But it is different when inviting is a curator who has roots in the same culture and has developed a global gaze over the years. His research is also focused on women artists who, although they come from different cultures and worlds, have been able to maintain the feelings, characters and experiences of their culture of origin wherever they are. I like that in this Exhibition there is the presence of works made in the last century that are now considered reference points for new generations. And within this movement we will find many Italian names. Adriano Pedrosa will try his hand at the second edition of College Arte, which opened in 2022 with Cecilia Alemani, an activity that La Biennale cares about very much. I am sure that the 60th International Art Exhibition and its curator will be able to excite and fill (as the curator of the 18th Architecture Biennale Lesley Lokko said) those gaps in the history of art with many presences so far overlooked.”

Finally, as of today, June 22, the form for submitting proposals for projects such as Collateral Events, promoted by international nonprofit organizations and institutions working in the field of art that will set up their exhibitions and initiatives in Venice, if selected, is online.

Collateral Events: application for participation.

Venice Biennale 2024 will be dedicated to foreigners: it will be titled Foreigners Everywhere

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