Venice Biennale's 2024 Theme Is ‘Foreigners Everywhere’

Conversation Adriano Pedrosa's New Phase Camila Belchior

The exhibition is titled Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere after Claire Fontaine‘s neon sculptures that used the phrase, which was borrowed, in turn, from a Turin collective who employed it to fight xenophobia in the early 2000s.

The exhibition is curated by Brazil’s Adriano Pedrosa, director of MASP, the São Paulo Museum of Art.

Pedrosa said, ‘the backdrop for [Claire Fontaine’s] work is a world rife with multiple crises concerning the movement and existence of people across countries, nations, territories and borders, which reflect the perils and pitfalls of language, translation and ethnicity, expressing differences and disparities conditioned by identity, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, wealth, and freedom.’

‘In this landscape, the phrase Foreigners Everywhere has (at least) a dual meaning,’ he continued.

‘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.’

Pedrosa said The Biennale Arte 2024 will focus on artists who are themselves foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diaspora, émigrés, and refugees, as well as those who are outsiders in other senses, such as queer artists and folk or outsider artists.

Pedrosa is the first curator of the Venice Biennale’s International Art Exhibition. —[O]

Main image: Adriano Pedrosa. Courtesy the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP).