The Biennale di Venezia in 2024

The Biennale di Venezia in 2024:
between audacity and exoticism

A look at one of the main art meetings worldwide, from the eyes of a Panamanian artist in an edition in which Panama had a relevant presence
All canals lead to Venice, says an old sailor saying. And this is demonstrated by the sixtieth edition of the Venice Biennale, the most famous meeting of the arts since the 19th century. Under the umbrella of its title, “Foreigners everywhere”, it brought together artists and delegations from Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania (called the Global South), including the first pavilion from Panama. It is also the first time, since its foundation in 1895, that it has been directed by a Latin American: the Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa, who invited a majority of indigenous and migrant artists to the central pavilion who touch on the theme of gender representation and decolonization. . Is it personal and collective condition or political position that currently defines what art is? Is this a bold proposal that seeks to provoke?
Beyond inclusion and decolonization
For more than three decades, the incorporation of groups or communities outside the world and the power system of art has been in crescendo, from performances at the TATE Modern in London in the mid-nineties to contradictory community projects at the La Biennale. Havana before the pandemic. The canonization of this process of inclusion and decolonization at a global level has been Venice this year. This process has had a checkered history: in its beginnings it was full of surprise and criticism, especially towards the art establishment, which progressively adopted these principles to secure state funds and a reputation for social conscience.

It is a process that, if analyzed well, displaces the romantic idea of art as savior and rather recognizes the complexity of human nature and artistic language, power structures, the great differences of realities in the world and the simplification of the idea of aesthetics or aesthetics based on these differences. We must also take into account the growth of the enormous influence of private galleries that contribute judiciously to the promotion of their artists in local museums of contemporary art and in the financing of national pavilions, as has happened in the past with Great Britain and the United States. That is why this year's Venice Biennale, as part of that history, is full of wonderful works that resist being seen solely through a political prism, prices, the number of attendees or the popularity induced on the networks. social, as well as to be part of the countless works exoticized by their curators, sponsors or the artists themselves.
Lions and visual poems
One of the works that most impressed me due to its complexity and beauty was the installation by the Australian artist Archie Moore, who won the grand prize of the Biennial: the Golden Lion, together with the New Zealand Maori collective Mataaho. I spoke with Moore about our contrasting perspectives of the Pacific Ocean while visiting his work, titled 'Kith and Kin', and reading on the walls of the immense Australian pavilion his mutilated handwritten family tree (Aboriginal and European): an endless blackboard. In the middle of the room, like an altar to memory, official files are displayed with stories of abuse of aboriginal people surrounded by a narrow moat of water, a balm of reconciliation.

For Glenda León, a Cuban artist living in Madrid and one of the most prominent in Latin America, her favorite works were those of the Japan Pavilion with the artist Yuko Mohri, who combines and creates flimsy and delicate survival machines using common tools, household objects and fruits - an intimate metaphor of survival - and the work of the South Korean artist Lee Ufan, organized by the Berggreun foundation at the Palazzo Diedo, in which he combines simple geometric shapes, noble materials and light in the palatial space: “visual poetry” , according to León.

News

The Biennale di Venezia in 2024