Page 17 - The 60.Venice Biennial & MoMA issue of WOA Contemporary Art magazine

artists in multiple ways. These works reveal an interest in craft,
tradition, and the handmade, and in techniques that were at times
considered other or foreign, outsider or strange, in the field of fine
arts. A second motif is family of artists - artists related by blood or
marriage, many of them Indigenous. Once again tradition plays an
important role in the transmission of knowledge and practices from
father or mother to son or daughter, or among siblings, relatives,
FOREIGNERS and couples.
EVERYWHERE The Exhibition also features a Nucleo Storico, gathering works
from twentieth-century Latin America, Africa, the Middle East,
Adriano Pedrosa
and Asia. Much has been written about modernisms in the Global
Curator of the 60th International Art Exhibition
South, and three sections feature works from these territories,
much like an essay, a draft, a speculative curatorial exercise that
The title of the 60th International Art Exhibition is drawn from a
seek to question the boundaries and definitions of modernism:
series of works made by the collective Claire Fontaine since 2004:
Abstractions and Portraits, in the Central Pavilion at the Giardini,
neon sculptures in different colours rendering the expression
and Italians Everywhere, in the Corderie of the Arsenale. We are
“Foreigners Everywhere” in multiple languages. The expression
all too familiar with the histories of modernism in Euroamerica, yet
was, in turn, appropriated from the name of a collective from
the modernisms in the Global South remain largely unknown. In this
Turin that in the early 2000s fought racism and xenophobia in Italy:
context, these histories assume a truly contemporary relevance -
Stranieri Ovunque. The backdrop for the work is a world rife with
we urgently need to learn more about and from them. Most of the
multifarious wars and crises concerning the movement of people
artists in the Nucleo Storico are exhibited in la Biennale for the first
across nations, territories, and borders.
time, and thus a historical debt is paid to them.
These crises reflect the perils and pitfalls of language, translation,
and nationality, in turn highlighting differences and disparities
Claire Fontaine: Foreigners Everywhere (English), 2005 Tecnolux ultra violet,
conditioned by identity, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, 10mm glass, back-painted, framework, electronic transformer, cables.
freedom, and wealth. In this panorama, the expression “Foreigners Photo by Studio Claire Fontaine. Copyright Studio Claire Fontaine. Courtesy of
Everywhere” has several meanings. Firstly, wherever you go and Claire Fontaine and Galerie Neu, Berlin
wherever you are, you will always encounter foreigners -they -we
are everywhere. Secondly, no matter where you find yourself, you
are always truly, and deep down inside, a foreigner.
The Exhibition features 331 artists and collectives living in and
between 80 countries - including Hong Kong, Palestine and Puerto
Rico - a testament to how artists have always travelled and moved
about under various circumstances. Biennale Arte 2024’s primary
focus is thus artists who are foreigners, immigrants, expatriates,
diasporic, exiled, or refugees - particularly those who have moved
between the Global South and the Global North.
The Italian straniero, the Portuguese estrangeiro, the French é
tranger, and the Spanish extranjero are etymologically connected to
the strano, the estranho, the é trange, and the extraño, respectively,
which is precisely the concept of “stranger”. The first meaning of
the word “queer” is “strange”, 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 self-taught artist, the
folk artist, and the artista popular; and the Indigenous artist, who
is frequently treated as a foreigner in their own land. The work of
these four subjects is the focus of the Nucleo Contemporaneo.
Two motifs have emerged in the research and appear in the
Exhibition. The first is textiles, which have been explored by many

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