Adrian Pedrosa, curator of the 2024 iteration of the Venice Biennale, announced this morning that the title and theme of the event will be “Strangers everywhere”. The exhibit will explore the concept of the outsider, focusing on marginalized people including exiles, refugees, immigrants, Indigenous peoples and queer people. The Biennale, which is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary, will take place from April 20 to November 24, 2024.
“Artists have always traveled in the most diverse circumstances, moving across cities, countries and continents, a phenomenon which has only grown since the end of the 20th century – ironically, a period marked by restrictions on the dislocation or displacement of people,” Pedrosa said in a statement. “The Arte Biennale 2024 will focus on artists themselves foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diasporic, emigrants, exiles and refugees, in particular those who have migrated between the South and the North.
Pedrosa, the director of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, is the first Latin American person, as well as the first native of the southern hemisphere, to organize the main exhibition of the Beinnale. He noted that the title was inspired by that of a 2006 series of neon signs by Palermo, Italy-based collective Claire Fontaine, in which the phrase appears in many hues and languages; this series is in turn named after the Turin-based anarchist and anti-racist collective Stranieri Ovunque, whose name translates to the titular phrase.
Speaking at a live-streamed press conference, Pedrosa explained: “The backdrop to Claire Fontaine’s work is a world full of multiple crises regarding the movement and existence of people across countries, nations, territories and borders, which reflect the perils and pitfalls of language, translation, ethnicity [in] expressing differences and disparities conditioned by identity, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, wealth and freedom.
The Biennale will include two sections, entitled “Nucleo Contemporaneo” and “Nucleo Storico” respectively, the first devoted to contemporary works and the second to older works, with the aim of expanding the canon of modernism to include countries outside Europe. and North America.
