Experiencing the Venice Biennale of Art is many things at once: a privileged pleasure, an exhausting slog, and an emotionally cerebral rollercoaster. The exhibition project is unique in form, with the Board of La Biennale di Venezia selecting a Director of the Visual Arts Sector, who not only curates the main exhibition, but develops a theme that guides the selection of the official collateral events, thirty projects this year, and is often used by the national participants in the curation of their pavilions, eighty-seven in total this year. 2024 marks the 60th International Art Exhibition, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, the first from Latin America, who is the artistic director of the São Paulo Museum of Art in Brazil. Pedrosa’s project is titled Foreigners Everywhere, which was inspired by the French art collective Claire Fontaine’s series of works with the same title started in 2004 with multi-colored neon signs that read “Foreigners Everywhere” in an ever expanding number of languages and forms.
Within and beyond the main exhibition at the Arsenale and Central Pavillion, one can see variations on the concept of “foreigners” in many of the exhibitions. The diasporic, refugees, immigrants, and expatriates are thoroughly highlighted, as are Indigenous artists, creating a curious play on the concept of “foreigners.” In the U.S. Pavilion, American Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee painter and sculptor Jeffrey Gibson is the first Indigenous artist to represent the nation with a project titled, the space in which to place me (2024). The U.S. Pavilion is co-curated by Portland, OR’s Kathleen Ash-Milby, curator of Native American art at the Portland Art Museum and Abigail Winograd, an independent curator.
There is an enormous amount of art to see, let alone write about. Fortunately, Variable West’s mission helped me to focus on the West Coast artist within Foreigners Everywhere. Of the 331 artists and collectives from 90 countries, five artists could be considered for this text. Two of the artists: Los Angeles’s Simone Forti, an 89-year-old choreographer and performer, along with the early Mexican Modernist Alfredo Ramos Martínez (1871, Monterrey, Mexico–1946, Los Angeles, U.S.) were both included in Pedrosa’s “Nucleo Storico” (Historical Nucleus). This curatorial device has a goal to expose audiences to a wide array of artists (189 of them) from the Global South that have largely been overlooked by Western art history. The “Nucleo Storico” unfolds in three sprawling and often overwhelming, (not in a good way) sections. Two are hung salon style, one for portraits where you would find Ramos Martínez and the other for abstractions. The third, titled Italians Everywhere that included a painting from Forti, showcases twentieth century artists from the Italian diaspora in a unique and handsome display originally designed by Brazilian Modernist architect Lina Bo Bardi for the São Paulo Museum of Art.
The three other West Coast artists are living in Los Angeles. Beatriz Cortez, (b. 1970, San Salvador, El Salvador) presented an eight foot tall outdoor monolith steel sculpture on the lawn of the Arsenale titled Stela XX (Absence) (2024). Made this year, the work’s torch welded and hammer beaten surface provide a quilted, textural life on this modernest form, while what seems like the backside of the work tracks the movements of Mayan monolith artifacts in museums around the world.
Lauren Halsey (b. 1987, Los Angeles) also presented works outdoors, continuing in a form (columns) and motif (Egyptian iconography) she has been exploring and producing work within for nearly a decade. Grouped under the title keepers of the krown, these six, 21 ft. tall sculptures are placed at the end of the Arsenale, overlooking the main harbor. Made from reinforced concrete, the objects are carved and etched with images of South Central Los Angeles, where Halsey and her family have called home since the 1920s as a result of the Great Migration. Adorning the tops of the works are the heads of people present in Halsey’s and South Central Los Angeles’s cultural life. The scored text and imagery reflect Hasely’s research into hieroglyphics, her dedication to collage, and the visual life of her neighborhood. At first blush the large columnar works modeled on another culture’s designs feels very at home in this old European city. Yet, these are more than monuments to place or people, the objects are invocations of Black resilience and joy, amplifying a positive image of Black culture on this global stage.
Kang Seung Lee (b. 1978, South Korea, lives in Los Angeles, CA) also digs into notions of commemoration and honoring the lives that impact our own. Within the Central Pavillion Lee filled a large gallery with an installation consisting of six wall works, about 5 x 4 ft. each, and a large central piece arranged on a wood platform, filling the floor with a 4 ft. border around it. The wall and floor works mirror each other in format, wood backgrounds with collaged elements of meticulously rendered decomposing forest logs created with graphite and watercolor, along with objects ranging from 24K gold thread, fossilized leaves, pebbles, acorns, and other items. All of Lee’s additions to the exhibition revolve around the loss of artists, whose lives were cut short due to AIDS-related complications. The wall texts help viewers draw out some of the names, such as Goh Choo San, José Leonilson, and Tseng Kwong Chi, all of whom died before the age of 40. Martin Wong’s (b. 1946 Portland, OR) inclusion in the series was more obvious (for me) due to Lee’s use of Wong’s well-known stylized American Sign Language glyphs, here as laser engraved hands popping from French cuffs. The installation has a feel of a puzzle, piecing together disparate, yet kindred lives. Lee’s video Lazarus (2023), by comparison, draws the audience in with seductive choreography (by Daeun Jung), staging, and pace. Located in one of the brick shacks at the end of Arsenale, the eight minute video allows you to witness an imagined collaboration between the choreographer Goh Choo San and the conceptual artist José Leonilson, which hinge upon the recreation of Leonilson’s final sculpture, Lazaro (1993), made from two men’s dress shirts, stitched together, bottom to bottom. In the video, the two dancers, Gabriel Jimenez Montes and Kevin Wong gaze upon and touch the recreated Lazaro before finally activating it, twisting and contorting it in a series of sensual and mournful movements until they are finally both wearing the garment.
Cortez, Halsey, & Lee’s projects stand out among the surplus of paintings in Foreigners Everywhere. At one point I ceased being able to see framed images on the wall, let alone read the extended wall label. Lee’s Lazarus does an admirable job of embodying much of the ethos of Foreigners Everywhere, as it brings a speculative attention to under the radar artists, while providing a moment of intimacy with the unknown. It truly was a revelatory moment in the exhibition, proving a moving access point to Pedrosa’s thesis.
60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere
Venice, Italy
April 20, 2024–November 24, 2024
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