“Stranieri Ovunque—Foreigners Everywhere,” curated by Adriano Pedrosa, proved to be an appropriate theme for the 60th Venice Art Biennale, provocatively explored by Indigenous artists (Australia and the U.S.), war refugees (Austria and Poland), artists addressing colonialism (Egypt, Spain, and Nigeria) and immigrant experiences (Croatia), artists collaborating with imprisoned women (The Vatican), artists representing four African countries with individual pavilions for the first time, and many more across nearly 90 national pavilions. As in previous Biennales, these artists challenge, critique, and subvert the idea of being aligned with the politics and policies of their birth or home countries—indeed, the very idea of representing a country seems somewhat archaic in our multicultural and nomadic world.
The Biennale’s title, “Stranieri Ovunque,” floats in neon letters above a canal in the Arsenale in multiple languages. The work, by artist collective Claire Fontaine, revitalizes a phrase coined in the early 2000s by a Turin collective that raised awareness of racism and xenophobia in Italy. These concepts are creatively channeled throughout the Biennale, reflecting feelings of alienation and otherness for Indigenous and colonized people, and for migrants and refugees fleeing environmental, economic, and political strife.
In the center of the Giardini, the U.S. and Australia present Indigenous artists fusing contemporary practices with ancestral histories, and the personal with the political, but executed in vastly different styles and tones. In the U.S. pavilion, Jeffrey Gibson’s “the space in which to place me” is polished and lush; sumptuous color enlivens every wall and surface, running through hand-painted murals, patterned paintings and textiles, video, and interwoven text. These elements create an environment for Gibson’s larger-than-life hybrid sculptural forms with ceramic heads, as well as busts and his signature beaded punching bags—all adorned with tribal beads, ribbons, and textiles. Gibson has credited reconnection with his Choctaw-Cherokee heritage, and his focus on issues of marginalization, racism, homophobia, and the trauma of injustice in his work, with the act of finding joy and self-healing.
His exterior courtyard installation, designed with variously sized red pedestals and columns, invites climbing, lounging, and, ideally, an exchange of ideas. An opening performance and parade of Jingle Dress Dance, by the Colorado Inter-Tribal Dancers and the Oklahoma Fancy Dancers, reflected the energy of the exhibition, and the merging of ancestral traditions.
In contrast to Gibson’s exuberant installation, Archie Moore’s “kith and kin,” winner of the Golden Lion Award, is dark and somber, evoking a memorial to the enormity of loss—of life, freedom, land, language and traditions, identity, opportunities, and justice. A black reflecting pool dominates the dimly lit main space of the Australia pavilion, its serenity interrupted by stacks of paper that seem to float above. The surrounding walls and ceiling are painted black and covered with names, connecting lines, and a celestial map drawn in white chalk, tracing impressions of Moore’s extended family tree (including Kamilaroi, Bigambul, British, and Scottish heritage) through more than 2,400 generations, spanning over 65,000 years. The massive amount of data—collected over years of research—is intentionally, and successfully, overwhelming. Ancestors and living family members are personalized through their names and honored through the labor-intensive hand work, executed on site over several months. This stands in stark contrast to the austere stacks of more than 500 printed pages hovering above the pool, which contain documentation of prison reports and coronial inquests (many from the artist’s family members), laws enacted to suppress Indigenous lives, and evidence of the disproportionate number of Indigenous Australians in the prison system (the most incarcerated people globally, they account for 3.8 percent of Australia’s population but 33 percent of its prison population).
Through “kith and kin,” Moore brings international attention to the vitality of First Nations kinship. The impermanent medium of chalk becomes a potent symbol, referencing the omission of Indigenous history from his childhood education. As the systematic erasure of Indigenous history and culture in Australia and the U.S. continues, Gibson and Moore call for a recognition of their Indigenous identities and of the traumas inflicted on all those who have been treated like foreigners in their ancestral homelands. They also offer the potential for hope and universal connection.
Across the bridge in the Giardini, the pavilions of Austria and Poland tell stories of war and displacement through the voices of political refugees. Anna Jermolaewa escaped political persecution in Russia and moved to Austria in 1989. Her poetic, deceptively subtle installations mask a creative subterfuge that counters totalitarian tactics. In Austria’s national pavilion, four installations are presented in dedicated rooms and a courtyard, beginning with a 150-minute, multiscreen video installation, Rehearsal for Swan Lake (2024), created in collaboration with Ukrainian choreographer and ballet dancer Oksana Serheieva (who occasionally performs live). The video was inspired by Jermolaewa’s teenage memories of how the Russian government used Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake as a means of distraction and media censorship during times of political unrest—interrupting all regular broadcasting, the ballet was played on a loop, sometimes for several days straight. It served as code for changes in power then, and now Jermolaewa intends her rehearsal as a call to prepare for a new revolution.
Across the hall, in The Penultimate (2017), various flowers and plants, placed on chairs, stools, and plinths, simply and elegantly reference the revolutionary symbolism of flowers and their colors; examples include Georgia’s Rose Revolution (2003), Myanmar’s Saffron Revolution (2007), and Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution (2010). Ribs (2022/24) nods to the cunning way that sound engineers circumvented the postwar Soviet prohibition on owning popular music, especially rock music from the West—by copying albums onto discarded X-rays, known as “ribs” and “bones.” Displayed on a medical viewer, the films return to their original function, while selected music X-rays spin once a day on a record player. Outside, the courtyard contains a readymade bank of six telephone booths transported from a refugee camp in Traiskirchen, Austria; saved from obsolescence, they are functional and free to use. Accompanying text states that the most international calls made in Austria came from these booths (including Jermolaewa calling her family upon her arrival), and their interiors now serve as time capsules, scribbled with notes of hope and loss and memories from asylum seekers.
The Polish pavilion, following a political shift that resulted in a liberal cultural regime, canceled the scheduled nationalistic exhibition and gave the space to Open Group, a Ukrainian collective whose members (Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach, and Anton Varga) are refugees from the ongoing war. Many people experience, and relive, war through sound—air raids, sirens, missiles, explosions, planes—and hearing history is the focus of Repeat After Me II (2024), a follow-up to the collective’s 2022 video. Two wall-size videos, directly across the room from each other, project images of Ukrainian refugees living in foreign countries, filmed individually and head on, recounting their experiences of Russian attacks by vocalizing the sounds of the weapons used against them. They describe the weapons (accompanied by on-screen text definitions and descriptions inspired by survival booklets issued by the Ukrainian government) before verbally imitating the sound, twice. Then, audience members are instructed to “repeat after me” and participate in “war karaoke” from their seats or by stepping up to a bank of microphones, while the person on screen silently mouths the sound. Everything is spoken in Ukrainian, with English subtitles and phonetic interpretations of the sounds, such as “UUUUHhh TsurshHHH. TDDURRSHHTZHH TTZHT!”—a man giving voice to a plane flying overhead and a bomb hitting the oxygen section of a nearby power plant. It is surprisingly riveting.
Like many conceptual artists using the tools of beauty and humor to lure audiences in before delivering more serious content, Open Group embraces playfulness, absurdity, and camaraderie to inspire engagement and receptivity. However, when the refugees waver slightly in their calm and stoic recitations, as anxiety and trepidation emerge in their retelling, and they relive harrowing experiences, the realization of the horror experienced by these fellow human beings—which so many others have experienced and are continuing to endure—sets in. Once we bear witness to this, a shared humanity, connection, and empathy is forged.
The 60th Venice Biennale is on view through November 24, 2024.
