‘Stranieri Ovunque’ – ‘Foreigners Everywhere’, the title of the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, is drawn from a series of works started in 2004 by the Paris-born and Palermo-based collective Claire Fontaine. The works consist of neon sculptures in different colours that render in a growing number of languages the words “Foreigners Everywhere”. The phrase comes, in turn, from the name of a Turin collective who fought racism and xenophobia in Italy in the early 2000s: Stranieri Ovunque.

ADRIANO PEDROSA’S STATEMENT

In the curatorial statement Adriano Pedrosa wrote:

‘The backdrop for the 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. 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’.

‘(…) 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.’

‘The Italian straniero, the Portuguese estrangeiro, the French étranger, and the Spanish extranjero, are all etymologically connected to the strano, the estranho, the étrange, the extraño, respectively, which is precisely the stranger. Sigmund Freud’s Das Unheimliche comes to mind—The Uncanny in English, which in Portuguese has indeed been translated as “o estranho”– the strange that is also familiar, within, deep down side. According to the American Heritage and the Oxford Dictionaries, the first meaning of the word “queer” is precisely “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; the indigenous artist, frequently treated as a foreigner in his or her own land. The productions of these four subjects are the interest of this Biennale, constituting the Nucleo Contemporaneo. […] The International Exhibition will also feature a Nucleo Storico gathering works from 20^th century Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. […] A third room in the Nucleo Storico is dedicated to the worldwide Italian artistic diaspora in the 20^th century: Italian artists who travelled and moved abroad developing their careers in Africa, Asia, Latin America, as well as in the rest of Europe and the United States, becoming embedded in local cultures—and who often played significant roles in the development of the narratives of modernism beyond Italy.’

‘La Biennale itself, as an international event with so many official participations by numerous different countries, has always been a platform for the exhibition of works of foreigners from all over the world. In this rich tradition, the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, the Biennale Arte 2024, will be a celebration of the foreign, the distant, the outsider, the queer, as well as the indigenous.’

Fasada Polskiego Pawilonu w Wenecji, fot. Barbara K. Kaniewska

1. Polskie ćwiczenia z tragiczności świata. Między Niemcami a Rosją – Piotr Bernatowicz, Dariusz Karłowicz, Ignacy Czwartos – I etap
2. Polskie ćwiczenia z tragiczności świata. Między Niemcami a Rosją – Piotr Bernatowicz, Dariusz Karłowicz, Ignacy Czwartos – II etap
3. Powtarzajcie za mną – Marta Czyż, OPEN GROUP (Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach, Anton Varga) – I etap
4. Powtarzajcie za mną – Marta Czyż, OPEN GROUP (Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach, Anton Varga) – II etap
5. OWN – Alicja Głuszek, Aleksandra Kot, Wiesław Bartkowski, Klementyna Jankiewicz – I etap
6. OWN – Alicja Głuszek, Aleksandra Kot, Wiesław Bartkowski, Klementyna Jankiewicz – II etap
7. Bronisław Krzysztof, Krzysztof Krzysztof
8. Po drugiej stronie – Kathryn Zazenski, Maryna Tomaszewska
9. Surplus/Nadmiar – Małgorzata Jankowska, Viola Kuś
10. Strukturalizm iteracji: w kierunku kształtowania nowej przestrzeni – Artur Zaguła, Tomasz Frasoński, Anna Jaruga-Rozdolska
11. The Art of Loving/ O sztuce miłości – Myroslava Hartmond, Antonina Konopelska, Miłosz Bembinow
12. Intersensorial – Inés Ruiz Artola, Marta Dawidiuk, Przemysław Pacek
13. Sanctuary – Grażyna Siedlecka, Paulina Domagalska, Szymon Motyl
14. Kwiat paproci – Paulina Ortenburger, Adam Rokowski, Łucja Zenter
15. Sztuka kreowania przestrzeni – Robert Czado
16. Kontakt – Bartłomiej Nowowiejski, Viola Tycz
17. Pasieka – Marta Wróblewska, Stanisław Brach
18. Córka – Łukasz Mojsak, Łukasz Ronduda, Aneta Grzeszykowska
19. Obecność – Agnieszka Bebłowska Bednarkiewicz, Katarzyna Haber, Jerzy Kalina
20. Tryptyk – Przemysław Strożek, Marcin Dudek
21. Po drugiej stronie – Marcel Skierski, Maciej Rauch
22. X2 Plag – Jakub Szreder, Natalia Romik
23. meta_morphoses – Monika Turczyńska, Józef Krzysztof Oraczewski, Alicja Maciejko
24. Jeśli zbudujesz most, prędzej czy później ktoś nim przejdzie – Tomasz Wendland, Elvin Flamingo
25. MACULA. Ogród możliwy – Robert Dobrowolski, Magdalena Grzybowska, Aleksandra Pulińska, Urszula Zajączkowska
26. Antique games – Jan Wiktor Sienkiewicz, Michał Jackowski
27. Relacja Człowiek – Natura Via falsa – Małgorzata Błońska-Clardi, Elżbieta Leszczyńska Szlachcic, Bartek Szlachcic

Fasada Polskiego Pawilonu w Wenecji, fot. Barbara K. Kaniewska

Fasada Polskiego Pawilonu w Wenecji, fot. Barbara K. Kaniewska

Fasada Polskiego Pawilonu w Wenecji, fot. Barbara K. Kaniewska