Venice - Biennale Arte 2024 - Foreigners Everywhere - Corderie - Arsenale - Highlights

 Biennale Arte 2024 - Foreigners Everywhere 

Arsenale - Corderie

The 60th International Art Exhibition, organised by La Biennale di Venezia - entitled - Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere - until November 24 -  curated by Adriano Pedosa -  and takes place in two venues - the Corderie at the Arsenale - see below - and in the Giardini .

Mataaho Collective - Takapau

"Carrying a mesh sack filled with worldly possessions, the figure symbolises the challenges of displacement...the artwork serves as a cautionary tale on environmental negligence and capitalism, challenging the unsustainable pursuit of perpetual growth..."

Yinka Shonibare - Refugee Austronaut ll - 2016

"...The riders embody a particular kind of masculinity through their stylish attire and self-assured, powerful behaviour. Through this exploration of Nigerian patriarchal ideals, Ashadu relates the performance of masculinity to the vulnerability of a precarious class of workers..."

Silver Lion - Best Promising Young Artist

Karimah Ashadu - Machine Boys - video - 2024

"...her bark paintings host sprawling rivers of stars that twist and turn across the surface to convey an immersive view of the constellation against the night sky...She has explained that each star represents Maŋgalili souls past, present, and future...her star-filled sky and riverscapes emphasise a multidimensional understanding of Country; the inextricable link between the ancestral and lived worlds across generations, time, space, and place. The paintings pulsate with energy and give layers of form and meaning to the cyclical concept of life and death."
Naminapu Maymuru-White - Stars Reflected in the Water - 2023

"Aravani Art Project is a collective composed of cis and transgender women with the aim of spreading positivity and hope to their communities through their commissioned mural paintings. Their mural relates to representations of trans bodies and nature, with a nod to the processes of transition, dysphoria, and acceptance that trans people experience when acknowledging their identities..., colour is a crucial element of their work, both echoing their Indian background – where bright colours appears in clothing, spices, and architecture – as well as an amplification of the colours of the LGBTQI+ and trans flags that frequently appear in their work and resonate diversity among people."

Aravani Art Project - Diaspore - 2024

Jyothi Gowda and Karnika Pradeep

artists - Aravani Art Project

"Bárbara Sánchez-Kane deconstructs and dissects notions of masculinity through fashion, performance, sculpture, and painting.  Pret-a-Patria takes its title from the French fashion term prêt-à-porter, it introduces the Spanish-language concept of patria, the work alters the military image of the state to comment on the hegemonic symbols of masculinity and power it puts forward.  The performance features a group of men who practice the safe guarding of the national flag wearing her version of the military uniform with an open back exposing fitted lace lingerie. Juxtaposing masc and femme garments on the bodies of military men, Prêt-à-Patria presents itself as a salacious and sardonic take on Mexican nationalism, state reverence, and its violent indoctrination of identities."
Barbara Sanchez-Kane - Pret-a-Patris - 2021

"Ana Segovia’s work challenges dominant narratives of masculinity, particularly those propagated through the lasting influence of the film industry and the enduring Western trope."
Ana Segovia - Vamonos con Pancho Villa! - 2020

"In Pos’ se acabó este cantar - 2021 - exhibited alongside a pair of paintings - above - that represent Segovia’s diverse style, she also introduces her first film, giving life and movement to her fluorescent scenes. Featuring two charros - Mexican cowboys - wearing custom-made traditional suits with altered hues, Segovia’s close-up is staged almost like a screen test, revealing a certain homoeroticism amongst the actors and inviting viewers to reconsider the dynamics within male-centric environments."

Ana Segovia - Aunque me Espine la Mano  

installation view at Pos’ se acabó este cantar exhibition -  2020

Nucleo Storico - Italians Everywhere 

The Nucleo Storico section at the Corderie is dedicated 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 and the United States, becoming embedded in local cultures—and who often played significant roles in the development of the narratives of modernism beyond Italy. This room features works by 40 artists who are first or second generations Italians, exhibited in Lina Bo Bardi’s glass easel display system - Bo Bardi herself an Italian who moved to Brazil, and who won the 2021 Biennale Architettura’s Special Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Memoriam. 

Clorindo Testa - Pintura o Circulo Negro - 1963

Nucleo Storico - Italians Everywhere 

Waldemar Cordeiro - Untitled -1963 

Alfredo Volpi - Fachada Marrom - 1950-60s

"Puppies Puppies - Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo - works across sculpture, installation, and performance art to sharply address personal and political concerns.  Electric Dress - Atsuko Tanaka - pays tribute to those killed in 2016 at the mass shooting that took place during a “Latin Night” party at Pulse, a queer nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The sculpture references Atsuko Tanaka’s Electric Dress - 1956 - with LED lights that flicker to the pulse of a heartbeat and lights that cycle through the rainbow colours found in the Progress Pride Flag. Both sculptures honour queer and trans life while confronting oblivion and invisibility."

Puppies Puppies - Jade Guanaro kuriki-Olivo  

Electric Dress - Atsuko Tanaka - 2023

"An artist, actor, filmmaker, farmer, teacher, and writer, Erica Rutherford’s remarkably multidisciplined career took her across several countries and continents. While undergoing transition during the 1970s, Rutherford began experimenting with self-portraiture...Writer Jay Prosser described Rutherford’s painted self-portraits as “envisioning the woman Rutherford wishes to become and are gradually transformed as she transitions into a record of that becoming . . . the painted self-portrait appears as a model for the transsexual body to follow”.

Erica Rutherford - The Diver - 1968

"Terkol employs stitching or drawing directly onto cloth to create characters existing in an uncertain realm, characterised by ambiguous borders that encourage viewers to become storytellers...Through feminist workshops, Terkol establishes a platform for women to share experiences and address socioeconomic challenges through a collective conceptual process...Terkol’s artistic production undergoes a transformation through the participatory collective storytelling process, wherein women reinterpret their histories, current realities, and ways of being."

Gunes Terkol - artist

 

Gunes Terkol - banner detail

Disobedience Archive is a multiphase, mobile, and evolving video archive that concentrates on the relationship between artistic practices and political action. For the Biennale it  embodies The Zoetrope – the pre-filmic machine that animated images. It investigates the representation of movement, giving rise to a centrifugal space. Two new macrosections including forty films: Diaspora Activism deals with transnational migration processes in the context of hegemonic neoliberalism, as a struggle that drives new ways of inhabiting the world and questions the very meaning of citizenship. Gender Disobedience is, in continuity with the previous section, dedicated to nomadic subjectivities, conceived as a rupture of heterosexual binarism. This section brings together the alliances between activism that critiques capitalism and the LGBTQ+ movements that have emerged globally.

Disobedience Archive

"A multiphase, mobile, and evolving video archive created by 56 artists. developed and curated by art theorist Marco Scotini in 2005."

Disobedience Archive

"Daniel Otero Torres’s multidisciplinary practice encompasses installations, sculptures, and drawings, all of which are community-based movements of resistance carried out by marginalised groups. Aguacero is an ephemeral site-specific installation made of collected locally and recycled materials, reflects Otero Torres’s engagement with the impact of ecological crises on the lives of marginalised Colombians... Torres draws attention to the challenge of ensuring access to clean, drinkable water faced by communities worldwide, an issue that is intricately connected to the processes of privatising and financialising nature. As an open structure to the eyes of the world, the work reveals the journey of flowing water and its many meanings."
Daniel Otero Torres - Aquacero - 2024

"Kiluanji Kia Henda was born in Luanda in 1979, four years after Angola gained independence from Portugal and the country’s civil war began....The Geometric Ballad of Fear - Sardegna - consists of nine photographs, in black and white, with the same grids in black superimposed as a graphic element over views of the Sardinian landscape, overlooking the Mediterranean."

Kiluanji Kia Henda - the Geometric Ballard of Fear - Sardegna - 1-9 - 2019

"In A Espiral do Medo Kiluanji Kia Henda uses the actual metal railings taken from the buildings and houses in Luanda that interested the artist in 2015. Although made of metal railings that once offered robust protection to those inside, the large-scale sculpture now seems permeable and rather unstable – resembling a ruin of sorts – and serving as a mere emblem of fear."

Kiluanji Kia Henda - A Espiral do Medo - 2022

"Evan Ifekoya is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice mirrors their role as a spiritual practitioner, perceiving art as a platform for redistributing and renegotiating resources, challenging implicit rules and hierarchies in public and social spaces. The Central Sun  functions as a broadcast station within the Resonant Frequencies project, an immersive sound installation aiming to investigate existence and understanding beyond the limitations of visual perception...Delving into altered states of consciousness through the experiences of sound, silence, and listening, the artist draws on the wisdom of both Yorùbá traditions and practices, always with the elevation of Black and queer consciousness at the forefront."

Evan Ifekoya - The Central Sun - 2022

"French-Moroccan artist Boucha Khalili’s The Mapping Journey Project was developed over three years across the Mediterranean migration routes, collaborating with refugees and stateless citizens from North and Eastern Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Her practice involves neither casting nor interviews; instead, she engages for long periods in listening to her collaborators so that they can devise and perform their narration. Each of the eight videos is made of one long static shot without cuts, focusing on a map, a hand holding a permanent marker, and the drawing in real-time of often years-long tortuous and perilous journeys."

Bouchra Khalili - The Mapping Journey Project - 2008-11

Bouchra Khalili - The Mapping Journey Project - 2008-11

"Juana Marta Rodas, was born in a peasant village, she learned ceramics from her grandmother, Maria Balbina Cuevas, continuing Paraguay's tradition of mother-daughter mentorship in this art form. While ceramics in Paraguay hold deep historical significance, Rodas boldly transformed this tradition. She subverted traditional forms and themes, blending her Guaraní heritage with contemporary art, creating whimsical, zoomorphic, and anthropomorphic figures. Unlike conventional pottery, her work features a bestiary of imaginary animals and hybrid beings, guided by a free and imaginative approach, rejecting naturalistic representation."

Juana Marta Rodas

"River Claure is a Bolivian photographer and visual artist best known for his meticulously constructed portraits, magical landscapes, and photographic docufiction series. The photographic series Warawar Wawa - 2019–2020 -  an adaptation of Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince set in contemporary Bolivia, exhibit a fundamentally performative approach to photography. Rather than mechanical representations of a given reality, they appear as playful interventions in what we take as given. A portrayed person can become an actor, or a documentary photograph may become a film set. Claure’s photographs are real portraits of real faces, landscapes, and identities and are based on his extensive work living in and with real communities."

River Claure - Warawar Wawa - 2019-2020

 Visit 

Biennale Arte 2024

La Biennale di Venezia