The Venice Biennale opened this weekend for its 60th edition with the theme “Foreigners Everywhere,” inspired by the collective Claire Fontaine’s sculpture series displaying the phrase in neon characters in various languages for the past two decades. That premise, as laid out by curator Adriano Pedrosa (the first person from Latin America to lead the Biennale’s international art exhibition), has two meanings: (1) Anywhere you go, you’ll encounter foreigners, and (2) everyone in some way is a foreigner no matter where they are.
Photo: Andrea Avezzu
Accordingly, this Biennale focuses on artists who are foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diasporic, exiled, or refugees. The Nucleo Contemporaneo section also highlights the queer artist, the outsider artist, and the Indigenous artist, and the Nucleo Storico presentation centers modernism in 20th-century works from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
That all means there was a marked shift in what was shown this year compared to in previous iterations, a clear and proud sign of support for artists in the margins. The international exhibition features 331 artists and collectives from some 80 countries, with the edge going to artists who have never participated; indeed, most artists mentioned below are showing at the Biennale for the first time, providing the longest-running international art exhibition an invigorating perspective.
Here are five standouts from the 2024 Venice Biennale.
Narrative Strands
