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The 60th International Art Exhibition, titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, will open to the public from Saturday, April 20 to Sunday, November 24, 2024, at the Giardini and the Arsenale; it will be curated by Adriano Pedrosa and organised by La Biennale di Venezia. The pre-opening will take place on April 17, 18, and 19; the awards ceremony and inauguration will be held on 20 April 2024.
“I am honored and humbled by this prestigious appointment, especially as the first Latin American to curate the International Art Exhibition, and in fact the first one based in the Southern Hemisphere”, Pedrosa commented.
Adriano Pedrosa (Brazil) is currently the artistic director of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand – MASP, where he has curated many exhibitions, including Histories of Dance (2020) and Brazilian Histories (2022). He has recently been appointed the 2023 recipient of the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence, that was presented to him by the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, New York.
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.
„The expression Stranieri Ovunque“, explains Adriano Pedrosa, „has several meanings. 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.“
Since 2021, La Biennale di Venezia launched a plan to reconsider all of its activities in light of recognized and consolidated principles of environmental sustainability. For the year 2024, the goal is to extend the achievement of “carbon neutrality” certification, which was obtained in 2023 for La Biennale’s scheduled activities: the 80th Venice International Film Festival, the Theatre, Music and Dance Festivals and, in particular, the 18th International Architecture Exhibition which was the first major Exhibition in this discipline to test in the field a tangible process for achieving carbon neutrality – while furthermore, itself reflecting upon the themes of decolonisation and decarbonisation.
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