It is no secret that this edition has received a fair share of rather negative reviews. It might sound banal and perhaps even pedestrian to spell it out, but let\u2019s acknowledge that the Biennale has now officially grown into an untameable monster. A matter of quantity over quality? Perhaps things are more complex. With its nearly ninety pavilions arranged over two main locations\u2014the Giardini and the Arsenale\u2014and a myriad of \u201ccollateral events\u201d nestled among the most obscure calli<\/em> of mazy Venice, it is safe to say that no living soul, perhaps not even the organizers, ever gets to see the totality of this event. It has simply become impossible. Colleagues and acquaintances confirm a pragmatic navigation plan widespread among visitors: day one for the Giardini, day two for the Arsenale, then anything they might stumble upon around the city while making their way, exhausted, to the Stazione S. Lucia as they attempt to escape this maddening, hyper-expensive tourist trap of a city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sandra Gamarra<\/strong>
PINACOTECA MIGRANTE<\/em>, installation view, Venice Biennale, 2024.
Photo: Matteo de Mayda, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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There was a time, not so long ago, when the Biennale comprised only the roughly thirty pavilions in the Giardini. In 1999, the event spread to the nearby, mastodonic Arsenale. The main pavilion, which since 2006 has housed the keynote exhibition curated by the artistic director, alone features twenty-six galleries. Although it is not billed as such, in truth, it is a small museum in its own right. The sheer quantity of art and exhibitions leaves no choice to those of us who cannot afford to stay a month in Venice. As a result, the Biennale has become a real-life Instagram scroll. There is no opportunity to slow down and truly connect with the art. This greatly penalizes some time-based art forms, such as video. Throughout the duration of the Biennale, FOMO looms large over the Venetian sky. So, all we do now is gorge, quickly, online as well as in real life. People-watching at the Biennale reveals much about the lack of engagement and the convoluted consumption rhythms that this kind of mega-show\u2014which more and more resembles the art fair model\u2014 ultimately imposes. Even writing about the Biennale has been negatively impacted by its colossal size\u2014like the event, reviews are often too sprawling and superficial; attempting to mention everything, they end up saying very little of substance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s plenty to learn here about the state of the art world, the display conventions that we still implicitly follow but that may have now become obsolete, and the ways in which the world has changed: our commitment to art, our expectations, our attention spans, our intolerances … In many ways, for better or worse, the intensity of the Biennale generates the hypervisibility of internal and external crises of all kinds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this sense, the keynote exhibition, Foreigners Everywhere<\/em>, has also unwittingly come to incarnate, and mercilessly expose, the very limits of the exhibition as an organism. Curating is always a matter of nuances, subtle gesturing, marking, pointing, suggesting, linking, and directing; previous Biennale curators Cecilia Alemanni and Lesley Lokko competently and masterfully negotiated the challenges proposed by such maze-like, gargantuan spaces. But even then, the number of works of art on show forbade the kind of fine-tuned curation required by complex and sophisticated topics. After all, the symbolic meaning of a constellation is determined by the limited number of celestial bodies it links.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Louis Frontino<\/strong>
Metropolitan<\/em>, 2019.
Photo: Matteo de Mayda, Collection Tom Keyes and Keith Fox, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
A nearly impossible curatorial task? It may be that many of the negative reviews drawn by this year\u2019s Biennale curator, Adriano Pedrosa, have something to do with a general sense of fatigue caused by art overdose. Ultimately, his keynote exhibition, housed in the main Giardini Pavilion and spilling over into the cavernous galleries of the Arsenale, appears fragmented, disjointed, at times random, and inconclusive. There are not just foreigners everywhere, there are gems, too. But their inclusion and arrangement across the galleries often remains irredeemably opaque.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It doesn\u2019t help that the aesthetic tone is so surprisingly conservative\u2014museal in the most antiquated possible sense: stiff and at times repetitive, unimaginative, it lacks true showstoppers and emphasis. Painting strongly prevails. The mounting seems to timidly sketch out a history of modernism in the Global South. Formalist and Cubist influences from the 1920s and 1930s are visible everywhere, although none of the Western artists referenced in the works are on display anywhere. What is Pedrosa trying to prove?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The question looms larger as one wonders through the galleries: who is the foreigner referenced in the title of the exhibition? Upon its unveiling, Anish Kapoor objected: \u201cA naive attempt to turn around a racist anti-immigration slogan.\u201d Perhaps a provocation to the new far-right government of Giorgia Meloni and her followers? Or a simple and truthful consideration that ultimately everyone is a foreigner somewhere? But can the very idea of \u201cforeigner\u201d be reduced to merely \u201cnot fitting into a majority\u201d without diluting its meaning? Surprisingly, Foreigners Everywhere<\/em> is not an exhibition about migrations, although the theme surfaces here and there. Its gravitas is more existential. Perhaps therein lies its weakness. It is a loose and too-open interpretation of a starkly political and contemporary theme, far too culturally current to lend itself to any kind of interpretation beyond its true origin: a phrase muttered under one\u2019s breath to condemn the presence of outsiders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Oto Hudec<\/strong>
Floating Arboretum<\/em>, installation view, Venice Biennale, 2024.
Photo: Matteo de Mayda, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Regardless of its curatorial merits or shortcomings, the exhibition poses pressing questions about the purpose of the Biennale and that of art in general in this complex moment. The mood of this edition is \u201csolemn, concerned, occasionally didactic,\u201d noted Laura Cumming in The Observer.<\/em> \u201cThe preoccupations of the artists\u2014colonialism, migration, queer and Indigenous rights, climate crisis\u2014will surprise nobody, and geopolitics are inescapable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Has all art become inescapably political? And can the art world truly afford to be as politically radical, and oftentimes righteous, as it has lately become? There are grand political statements such as the \u201cconvenient\u201d or \u201cinevitable\u201d self-censoring of the Israeli Pavilion (Ruth Patir, Israel\u2019s artist, has chosen to keep her exhibition closed until \u201ca ceasefire and hostage release agreement is reached\u201d) and the exclusion of Russia (which this year has leased its pavilion to Bolivia). Meanwhile, it is business as usual for the US and the UK; so, is their defining involvement in the Palestinian genocide implicitly condoned? Ultimately, this Biennale seems to pose the question, Has art asked too much of itself? Perhaps this kind of hyper-politicization reveals the limits to which institutionally supported art can be authentically critical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Abel Rodr\u00edguez<\/strong>
Sin Titulo<\/em>, 2023.
Photo: Matteo de Mayda, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Abel Rodr\u00edguez<\/strong>
La montana centro y sus animales<\/em> nativos 5 especies<\/em>, 2022.
Photo: Matteo de Mayda, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Yet, despite the controversy that has engulfed the curation, many artists\u2019 contributions stand out because of their originality and potency. Among others, Amazonian artist Abel Rodr\u00edguez, who has inherited his ecological wisdom from Muinane elders and from the tribe of his birth, the Nonuya, offers a range of touching and colourful portraits of the devastated swaths of the forests he once called home. Rodr\u00edguez began to work as a local guide for scientific expeditions during the 1980s. By the 1990s, faced with loss and grief as his community was displaced by political turmoil and environmental devastation, he began to transfer his knowledge onto paper in the form of extremely detailed and dense forest drawings in which every leaf and living being is of equal importance. His drawings evoke the forest as a living organism in which everything is interconnected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deeply sensual and poetic, Louis Fratino\u2019s large and strikingly bold paintings explore the joys and turmoil of homosexual entanglements in ways that evoke a sense of fullness, pride, and determinacy. Never falling into the obviousness of voyeurism and blatant eroticism, Fratino draws from early modern aesthetics\u2014notably Picasso\u2019s late-stage cubism\u2014to craft a thoroughly contemporary and highly confident personal style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Louis Fratino<\/strong>
April (after Christopher Wood)<\/em>, 2024.
Photo: Matteo de Mayda, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Louis Fratino<\/strong>
Eggs, dishes, coreopsis, <\/em>2020.
Photo: Matteo de Mayda, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Smart and unexpectedly moving, Kang Seung Lee\u2019s elaborate display combines the narrative and iconographic possibilities of artistic figures such as Goh Choo San, Tseng Kwong Chi, Martin Wong, Jose Leonilson, and Joon-soo Oh, among other artists who died due to AIDS-related complications. His stories are woven, often with golden threads, through the fabric of botanical representations and the summoning of evocative imagery and objects that the viewer is asked to conceptually interlace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Kang Seung Lee<\/strong>
Constellation<\/em>, 2023, installation view, Venice Biennale, 2024.
Photo: Matteo de Mayda, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Nour Jaouda\u2019s colossal canvases explore notions of rootedness and resilience through the importance that trees play in her life. Drawing from the personification of olive trees by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, Jaouda produces intricate and thoroughly abstract arboreal portraits that through the use of natural dyes embody a material presence that arrests and transports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the most unsung accomplishments of Pedrosa\u2019s curation certainly lies in the outstanding selection of contemporary painters that he\u2019s managed to gather. A room dedicated to the large canvases of Huitoto Amazonian artist Rember Yahuarcani is truly breathtaking. Evoking the celestial depths of universal infinitude, Yahuarcani\u2019s imagery brims with fluid and nondescript biomorphic continuity. Otherworldly harmonious interconnectedness appears simultaneously timeless and utterly contemporary: an ancestral inscription of peace and spiritual wholesomeness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Rember Yahuarcani<\/strong>
Aquellos otros mundos<\/em>, 2023.
Photo: Andrea Avezz\u00f9, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Beyond the main pavilion, through the Giardini and Arsenale, the international offerings are also remarkably strong. Sandra Gamarra\u2019s exhibition PINACOTECA MIGRANTE<\/em> is a compelling post\u2013natural-history tour de force. Questioning how colonial modes of representation, from botanical illustration to glass domes and cabinets of curiosities, have shaped our understanding of nature and reality, Gammara\u2019s work subverts ancient objectifying tropes in elegant, effortless, and incisive ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Colonial legacies are also explored in original and effective ways in the Serbian pavilion through the work of Aleksandar Denic, a haunting and bleak installation in which abandoned architectural places preserve the traces of lived lives and consumerist logos. Drenched in inexpungable narratives and riddled with a sense of suffocating anxiety, Exposition Coloniale<\/em> ultimately stages an \u201cexperiential portrait\u201d of a post-colonial Europe grappling with loss, haunted by American dreams, and eviscerated by the hollow promises of capitalist consumerism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Aleksandar Denic<\/strong>
Exposition Coloniale<\/em>, installation views, Venice Biennale, 2024.
Photos: Matteo de Mayda, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Mysteriously sidelined by many critics, the Austrian pavilion presents one of the most compelling masterclasses in contemporary conceptualism. Sometimes slapstick, often moving or wittingly quirky, yet always thoroughly thoughtful, Anna Jarmolaewa\u2019s mini-retrospective shows how truly political art can also be surprising, engaging, accessible, and sometimes even humorous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Romanian pavilion, painter Serban Savu presents a collection of sombre and powerful paintings. Stylistically suspended in a subtle synergy of realism and stylization, the canvases comprising the series What Work Is<\/em> aptly articulate a deadpan, photographic lexicon of mundane banality. The leisure and labour of the working classes are simultaneously exposed in their inescapable necessity and alienating monotony. The result is a contemplative and poignant existentialist exploration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Equally impressive is the double feature presented at the Czech\/Slovak pavilion. On the outside is Oto Hudec\u2019s Floating Arboretum<\/em>, a giant mural catalogue of stories that relates the collective effort of activists to prevent deforestation: a symbolic sanctuary for trees threatened by human expansion. Inside, the human\u2013non-human thread is further explored by Eva Ko\u0165\u00e1tkov\u00e1\u2019s The heart of a giraffe in captivity is twelve kilos lighter<\/em>. It is a touching account of the life and death of Lenka, captured in Kenya in 1954 and transported to Prague Zoo to become the very first Czechoslovak giraffe. A collaborative project involving artists and composers Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser and the collective Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures, the installation invites a poetic, embodied encounter as a place of critical intervention in which Lenka\u2019s memory can be reactivated through storytelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Eva Ko\u0165\u00e1tkov\u00e1<\/strong>
The heart of a giraffe in captivity is twelve kilos lighter<\/em>, installation view, Venice Biennale, 2024.
Photo: Matteo de Mayda, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
I have here tried to foreground interesting and truly innovative pavilions that for one reason or another have not attracted the attention of many other reviewers. But among the much-talked-about ones, Germany, Senegal, China, the USA, Netherlands, and Nigeria certainly deserve to be mentioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My overarching takeaways: painting is back with a vengeance, and it is more alive and powerful than ever. Nature, ecology, and climate concerns have now become fully canonized branches of post-colonial critique. Neither of these propositions would have looked likely twenty years ago\u2014a pleasant surprise. Decolonization has become a foundational modality across the work of almost every artist, although institutional and curatorial traditions often rest firmly in place beneath a post-colonial veneer\u2014read the small print. Despite these complications, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ voices are louder than ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If anything, one of the few true merits of the sheer size of the Biennale is its ability to produce a vivid, global snapshot of current trends, directions, and concerns. As a barometer, it might not be accurate, but it certainly speaks volumes about the times we live in and how art might help us grapple with its subtle complexities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An author and curator specializing in the history and theory of photography, representations of nature, and materiality in art, Giovanni Aloi has edited and authored more than ten books. He is the editor of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture<\/em> and the University of Minnesota Press series Art after Nature<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Abel Rodri\u0301guez, Aleksandar Denic, Anish Kapoor, Anna Jarmolaewa, David Soin Tappeser, Eva Kot\u00e1tkov\u00e1, Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures, Giovanni Aloi, Himali Singh Soin, Kang Seung Lee, Louis Fratino, Nour Jaouda, Oto Hudec, Rember Yahuarcani, Sandra Gamarra, Serban Savu<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venice Biennale<\/strong>
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