Venice Biennale Reveals Title, Theme for Sixtieth Edition

Adriano Pedrosa, curator of the 2024 iteration of the Venice Biennale, this morning announced that the title and theme of the event will be “Foreigners Everywhere.” The exhibition will investigate the concept of the foreigner, focusing on marginalized people including exiles, refugees, immigrants, Indigenous people, and queer people. The Biennale, which is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary, is slated to take place April 20–November 24, 2024. “Artists have always traveled under the most diverse circumstances, moving through cities, countries and continents, a phenomenon that has only grown since the late twentieth century—ironically, a period marked by increasing restrictions on dislocation or displacement of people,” Pedrosa said in a statement.

“The Biennale Arte 2024 will focus on artists who are themselves foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diasporic, émigrés, exiled, and refugees—especially those who have moved between the Global South and the Global North.”RelatedHELEN FRANKENTHALER FOUNDATION SUED FOR “DESTROYING” PAINTER’S LEGACYBMA CREATES PAID INTERNSHIPS HONORING VALERIE MAYNARD 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 Beinnale’s main exhibition. He noted that the title was inspired by that of a 2006 series of neon signs by the Palermo, Italy–based collective Claire Fontaine in which the phrase appears in numerous hues and languages; that series in turn is named for the Turin-based anarchist and anti-racist collective Stranieri Ovunque, whose name translates to the titular phrase. Speaking at a livestreamed press conference, Pedrosa explained, “The backdrop for Claire Fontaine’s work is a world full of multiple crises concerning 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 feature two sections, respectively titled “Nucleo Contemporaneo” and “Nucleo Storico,” the former dedicated to contemporary works and the latter to older works, with the goal of expanding the canon of modernism to include countries outside Europe and North America..