Biennale Arte 2024: Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere
The President of La Biennale di Venezia, Roberto Cicutto, and the Curator of the 60th International Art Exhibition, Adriano Pedrosa, today announce the title and theme of the Biennale Arte 2024, which will take place from 20 April to 24 November 2024 (pre-opening 17, 18, 19 April) at the Giardini, the Arsenale and various venues in Venice.
Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, the title of the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, is drawn from a series of works started in 2004 by the Paris-born and Palermo-based collective Claire Fontaine. The works consist of neon sculptures in different colours that render in a growing number of languages the words “Foreigners Everywhere”. The phrase comes, in turn, from the name of a Turin collective who fought racism and xenophobia in Italy in the early 2000s: Stranieri Ovunque.
The 60th International Art Exhibition will present, as usual, the National Participations with their own exhibitions in the Pavilions at the Giardini and at the Arsenale, as well as in the historic centre and Collateral Events. The selected projects – promoted by non-profit international organisations and institutions operating in the field of art – will be set-up in the city of Venice.
Adriano Pedrosa explains his choice: “the phrase Foreigners Everywhere has (at least) a dual meaning. First of all, that wherever you go and wherever you are 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”. “(…) The Biennale Arte 2024 will focus on artists who are themselves foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diasporic, émigrés, exiled, and refugees—especially those who have moved between the Global South and the Global North”. “The figure of the foreigner is associated with the stranger, the straniero, the estranho, the étranger, and thus the exhibition unfolds and focuses on the production of other related subjects: the queer artist, who has moved within different sexualities and genders, often being persecuted or outlawed; the outsider artist, who is located at the margins of the art world, much like the autodidact and the so-called folk artist; as well as the indigenous artist, frequently treated as a foreigner in their own land. The production of these artists is the primary focus of this Biennale, and constitutes the International Exhibition’s Nucleo Contemporaneo. (…) The International Exhibition will also feature a Nucleo Storico gathering works from 20th century Latin America, Africa, the Arab world, and Asia. (…) In addition, a special section in the Nucleo Storico will be devoted to the worldwide Italian artistic diaspora in the 20th century: Italian artists who travelled and moved abroad developing their careers in Africa, Asia, Latin America, as well as in the rest of Europe, becoming embedded in local cultures—and who often played significant roles in the development of the narratives of modernism beyond Italy”.
For his part, President Roberto Cicutto stated: “This is the 60th edition of the International Art Exhibition within a span of 128 years since the first, and there has never been a curator from a Latin American country. There has always been a significant participation of South American artists in the Biennale. But it is very different when they are invited by a curator who has roots in the same culture and has developed a global outlook over the years. His research is also focused on artists who, despite coming from different worlds and cultures, have been able to maintain the feelings, characteristics and experiences of their native culture wherever they may be. It will be interesting to discover how many national pavilions will follow this theme and how they will address it”.
