Venice Biennale 2024: The Lowdown

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By The Sybarite Team on 18th April 2024

As the 60th International Art Exhibition opens in the famed Italian city this weekend. We discuss the theme of this year's show and the names to know.

This weekend the art world will descend upon Venice for the 60th International Art Exhibition, which opens from Saturday 20 April before closing on Sunday 24 November. This year's curator is Brazilian Adriano Pedrosa, currently the artistic director of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo. Here he has curated individual shows for artists such as Tarsila do Amaral, Ione Saldanha and Hélio Oiticia, as well as the ongoing series devoted to different Histories: Histories of Childhood (2016), Histories of Sexuality (2017), Afro Atlantic Histories (2018), Women’s Histories, Feminist Histories (2019), Histories of Dance (2020), Brazilian Histories (2022).

“I am honoured and humbled by this prestigious appointment, especially as the first Latin American to curate the International Art Exhibition, and in fact the first one based in the Southern Hemisphere”, Pedrosa commented.

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Mzo_bordadoras de isla negra_1144_ph by marco zorzanello min. Gaggiandre 2015_avz9496_photo andrea avezzu courtesy of la biennale di venezia min.

At the Venice Art Biennale, countries from across the world gather to showcase contemporary artists. The main show presents the most thought-provoking and poignant art of the moment. This year’s  main exhibition is titled ‘Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere’ inspired by the Palermo collective Claire Fontaine. The neon sculptures inscribed with multifarious languages raises all important questions surrounding internationality, belonging, identity, nationalism and acceptance. The Exhibition presents 331 artists and collectives who have lived or currently live in and among 80 countries, including Hong Kong, Palestine, and Puerto Rico, reflecting how artists have always travelled and moved for a wide variety of reasons. The main focus of the Biennale Arte 2024 is therefore on those artists who are foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diasporans, exiles or refugees, particularly those who move between the Global South and Global North.

This is echoed throughout the wider exhibitions: from Nucleo Contemporaneo (focusing on queer artists, outsider artists on the fringes of the community, and self-taught artists) to Italians Everywhere (which showcases artists who have left their native Italy to travel across the globe).

Always endeavouring to provide an incubator for emerging artists, this year presents the 2nd iteration of Biennale Collage Art 2023-2023. Four talents have been selected from over 150 young applications, all aged under 30 and from 37 countries globally. These artists will be unveiled across the opening weekend, and displayed in the Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere exhibition. 

Stayed tune for further coverage as this iconic art event unfolds....

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