10 Pavilions at the Venice Biennale That Shed Light on Adriano Pedrosa’s Concept ‘Stranieri’
The 60th edition of La Biennale di Venezia often requires heightened attunement to retain subtle nods to the expansive layers of discursive and material choices–equally proposed by curators and artists alike. Many time-crunched art devotees never reflected on the wide range of aromatics painstakingly reconstructed from written and oral remembrances of scent memories within the Korean Pavilion’s Odorama Cities; ghostly in their visually immaterial presence. Just as those drawn into the Austrian Pavilion by the classical delight of Swan Lake segments in the flesh could easily miss the subtlety of Anna Jermolaewa’s anti-authority agenda. Other art pilgrims were similarly stymied by the trailing entry queues proliferating many video art-heavy pavilions, with hour records routinely set for those enduring to see Egypt’s presentation.
The Central Exhibition Stranieri Ovunque, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, is defined by movement: through the materiality of the art on view, through each viewer’s innate performativity, and didactically through advocacy-based discourse. Pedrosa’s concept of stranieri, or foreigners, extends beyond the central pavilion and the main hall of the Arsenale where displays of video art widely embrace traditional performing art formats. Bodies in motion–through opera, dance and running–explore pathways of migration and displacement, which is a theme echoed across many country’s pavilions. Even viewers navigating the spatial constraints of architectonic installations as a type of ‘stranieri’ themselves, may recall migratory paths and strained relationships to bureaucracy. Few previous Venice Biennale curators have managed to bring together the world’s cultural commissioning bodies around their theme as cohesively as Pedrosa—as migration and immigration continue to be a debated topic in many parts of the world. Visitors of the biennale will be introduced to the topic’s human dimension, both contemporary and historical, and feel the universality of what it is to be foreign.
A large cast makes Drama 1882 the biggest production to date by the institutionally favored Egyptian historian-cum-storyteller Wael Shawky. The new operatic video work is fully produced and directed for the stage in a more traditional proscenium format than earlier highlights from the artist’s oeuvre. However the scholarly rigor of Shawky’s practice is maintained through nuanced repeating choreographic tropes that further elucidate the English-subtitled Arabic lyrics and score. Meanwhile its saturated hues amplify each scene with kitsch-Wes-Anderson-inflected scenography. Each detail of the production’s design bolsters the educational melodrama of Shawky’s retelling of the scramble to maintain European political control of Alexandria during the Urabi revolution (1879–1882) inside the Egyptian Pavilion.
Though not to be misled, the exhibition balanced the screening with large-scale static displays, each part furniture design, part exaggerated stage set, and part sculptural reliefs. For those particularly taken with the artist’s glass practice (inc. the 2013 Cabaret Crusade marionette puppets) both Mirror (2024) and Vitrine, admiral (2024) are strong examples of the technical Muranese excellence.
As a capsule of complete multi-screen, multi-channel filmic immersion, Listening All Night to the Rain stands out as a deep reflection centers the archive as integral to historical memory and acknowledgment of personal presence for those otherwise marginalized within society. John Akomfrah’s vision for the British Pavilion strikes down the familiar ritual of ascending the facade’s central stair into an elevated space of cultural engagement, opting instead for visitors queueing along the narrow paving stones flanking the exterior to access the service entrance in the rear. After maneuvering (rather claustrophobically) into the basement space, a soothing flood of blue-tinged shadow screens familiarize viewers with the ever-present environmental experience of a rainy evening which is ubiquitous throughout the UK. Delivering on the entirety of the exhibition’s title straight out of the gate, visitors proceed upstairs in a quieter state uncertain of what is left to encounter. Each room holds a distinct sensorial tone defining a wide array of formats that video works can be curatorially offered up to audiences. Losing all sense of time, viewers can get lost becoming fully enveloped by the nearly hypnotically tranquil energy of a poetic essay on the interrelationships between migration, climate change, and cultural memory. Be it the rain or on the sea, Akomfrah negotiates water as an essential system connecting each room as a united whole, invoking unity of migrants and citizens alike towards a shared accountability in addressing the climate crisis.
Upon entering the Spanish Pavilion visitors are greeted by Sandra Gamarra Heshiki’s vision for a post-colonial museum-caliber pinacotheca–or picture gallery. Appealing to the global art world as a mimetic space of accepted institutional powerhouses such as the Museo del Prado, upon closer inspection each series of works and object labels destabilize the exclusionary tropes that previously sidelined uncategorizable historical figures that don’t fit within those dominant narratives. Heshiki–a Peruvian artist working in Madrid–goes further to purport the museum structure itself as a wayward traveler through the generations, transporting physical objects to new environments. Each gallery reflects a set course of art historical endeavors tied to colonialism. Starting with sublime landscape paintings, a hall of botanical specimens, an altar-like salon-style hang of gilded paintings highlighting extractive natural resources and their use functions, a cabinet of encyclopedic plundered craft curiosities, a portrait gallery of the colonial gaze, with a forecourt inhabited by life-size portraits of indigenous elders and seemingly heroic forgotten figures. Trained as a painter, all the works in the pavilion are from Heshiki’s own hand and imaginary in service to a heavy-weight pedagogical dictum, though not for the faint of heart when it comes to reading. The interrelationship between text and image is central to questioning the roots of institutional politics of representation, as well as identifying text (or the written word) as itself an unassumingly transformative tool in the arsenal of conquest. The central court, or Migrant’s Garden, is an alternative community-centered space to access regional histories of significant Indigenous activists and elders. Additionally, it serves as a library proposing knowledge that challenges the dynamics of the local–as periphery–about the control of narratives by global colonizers. As central to this new consciousness, the interior court provides a light-filled respite from the discomfort and brutality underpinning the mores of the museum sphere.
Undeniably exuberant Jeffrey Gibson’s presentation for the United States Pavilion even treats the facade of the building as a worthy canvas for his practice and lively site for performances of indigenous American troupes of jingle dress dancers. Displaying an evocative mix of paintings, sculptures, video work, dance, and participatory acts like claiming an advocacy slogan pin to wear, strengthened visitors’ focused energy throughout the space. The space in which they place me, the title of the exhibition is also encoded, like a frieze running atop the facade’s string coursing as an emblematic motto and taster of things to come. Vibrant plinths of exaggerated scale cluster asymmetrically in the pavilion’s forecourt, obscuring and disrupting the harmony of the neoclassical colonnade behind a critical discourse of how we assign value and visibility to specific communities within the country’s structure of governance. Gibson’s paintings fractalize and fragment phrases from significant texts in the nation’s collective memory–namely from the founding documents of the country–to obscure and reveal each letter’s geometric forms, thereby provoking a laborious process of reconstructing the phrase to access its encoded meaning. This process helps to evoke a new lens for interpreting a phrase likely already committed to memory for many citizens of the United States, allowing new avenues of consideration to emerge about how the implementation of these protected rights impacts indigenous and queer communities. Beading techniques unite the artist’s wide-ranging practices in wearable art, bird sculptures, frame borders of paintings, androgynous long-haired portrait busts, and upon the pièce de résistance: a punching bag turned fiber art sculpture titled “WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT” (2024). Either a bold proclamation of advocacy for the Indigenous community’s participation as collaborators in the nation’s governing structures, or an invitation to jab many strong right hooks into it as a cathartic release from the experience of the settler government’s bureaucratic exclusion, the work can be read as a discursive double entendre. The jubilant palette and nightclub soundscape (from the video work) filling the space make it an energetically uplifting show that draws viewers in with its enticing aesthetics. Yet simultaneously brings to the fore significant discussions of indigenous rights in America and provides an optimistic template for innovative avenues to self-determination for first nations communities today.
It may seem an obvious choice for the Polish Pavilion to touch upon the impacts of the current war with Russia being fought by their Ukrainian neighbors and the refugee migration that has ensued. With this in mind, Marta Czyż’s selection of an unexpected way to engage this discussion should be lauded for its investigation of language: that of film, documentary tropes, oral histories, and the disjuncture of otherness in the processes of verbal assimilation. Hinting at a specific tone of dry dark humor, Open Group’s video work titled Repeat After Me II (2002, 2024) relays a collection of Ukrainian survivors from the ongoing war bravely recounting their experience of the sonic landscape of artillery firing and shelling rounds being fired. Each individual recreates these sounds of imminent dangers and industrial violence as the audience not only views how these bodies respond to their recent traumas, but more importantly received this knowledge as an educational exchange where viewers learn to categorize these environmental intrusions with the preparatory hopes of saving lives in the future. The ddddzdzhzzzhhhzzzhhh’s of automatic fire uzi’s and whining zings of rocket launchers subtitled on-screen seem absurd in textual form, as only fitting for the realm of cartoons or mimetic evidence in stand-up comedy, yet what emerges is the visceral damage of both physical environments and the destabilization of the psyche through post-traumatic stress disorder. This artist trio–Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach, Anton Varga–found a method for conveying the multilayered displacement that occurs from experiencing horrors of war without necessarily inflicting a second degree of traumatic intrusion upon the viewer, choosing instead to starkly juxtapose these sorrowful conversations with the participatory format and crowdsourced unifying factor of karaoke. Though also a format that equally refers to educational videos for instruction in learning foreign languages with an appropriate syllabic emphasis, Poland’s pavilion has deeply semiotic undertones that aim to close the chasm between the knowledge systems migrants carry with them versus those knowledge systems of bureaucratic intimidation or linguistic exclusion that greet them on the other side of their journey.
MADEYOULOOK’s vision provided much-needed respite as a soothing low-lit cavern with a monumental cascade of plant reeds creating an installation difficult to categorize that requires a deeper look to decode. Utilizing natural materials and a refreshingly unencumbered spatial vocabulary, the South African Pavilion is anchored by a topographic architectural presentation although it can also be read as a sound installation. With a high preponderance of video art at this 60th edition, this pavilion’s auditory emphasis on songs and thoughts shared by farmers is a welcome break from constant screen time. Water politics is the core issue at stake, first introducing international audiences to the country’s botanical specimens such as the awe-inspiring resurrection plant’s (myrothamnus flabellifolius) hydrophilic apparent rebirth after the rains, and then spotlighting the socio-cultural frame within which communities reconcile traditions of water management with the current impacts of climate change. These traditional invocations of the rain are part of regional oral histories passed down through song, which offer a distinct juxtaposition in tempo and emotional resonance with the reflections of farmers forced to pivot their usual processes due to large shifts in amounts of seasonal and annual rainfall. Appearing first to be a soothing infusion of nature’s peace, shifts as viewers venture further into the space to rend your heartstrings as South Africans dependent on the land puzzle over the uncertainty of their futures. This approach to building empathy to spur individuals, communities, and policymakers into becoming changemakers that combat the climate crisis, I find a particularly powerful approach to discussing this urgent issue.
The (post)human body was the focus of Inflammation, the intergenerational dual artist exhibition at the Lithuanian Pavilion. Don’t miss this opportunity to enter Sant’Antonin, which is typically closed to tourists and the devout alike, located in Castello–the same neighborhood where the city’s hospital is found. This baroque interior has exquisite stonework, paintings, and altar decorations, but currently, Pakui Hardware’s installation of aluminum and blown glass takes center stage. Enclosing a continuous mountain ridge of plastic soil covering the floor are thin aluminum rails that operate as a framing device, both for the works’ protection to keep visitors from straying from their course as well as evoking curtains that ensconce hospital beds with the thin guise of privacy. This strong juxtaposition with the soft marble interiors of the baroque church writes plain the sickness of our planet underfoot, while structurally supporting hanging sculptures of once molten enlarged bodily systems: from transparent capillary and arterial views to dangling swollen organs. These are balanced by solid light box-mounted paintings, echoing visual reviews of x-rays, showcasing images of the surgical theater drawing on a lineage stretching throughout the mid-17th to late-18th century of anatomical research methods. Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė’s stylized aesthetic feels inspired by El Greco’s depth to countering forms, continued with strong results by Metaphysical painters like de Chirico. Yet Rožanskaitė’s preoccupation with cavernous folds of scrubs and hospital garments for surgical grade sterilization, tip the works into compositions of near abstraction. Viewers are confronted with the question of what remains if both earthly and corporeal bodies become foreigners within the culture at large. Gaining more intentional resonance through the interplay of architectural structures, visual lineages, and dystopian views of the present makes the Lithuanian Pavilion a thoughtful and enriching stop to explore.
The most unexpected discovery was Guerreiro do Divino Amor’s operatic and generative artworks representing the Swiss Pavilion. This Swiss-Brazilian artist’s name translates to “Warrior of Divine Love”, which expands as a central motive to dismantle the guise of Swiss cultural superiority rooted in an unwavering fetishization of the classical past. As the exhibition title makes plain, Super Superior Civilizations, is a hyper-critical satire on the foundational claims underpinning Switzerland’s branding as an epicenter of timeless prestige and excellence in luxury craftsmanship (most recognizable within the world of watches) as the embodiment of enlightened Culture. Although the pavilion’s Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia curatorial team–Sandi Paucic and Rachele Giudici Legittimo–assure audiences that it is fact done in good faith with the self-deprecating intent of laughing at oneself in earnest for the internalized clichés continually expounded about one’s public-facing persona on the global stage. This presentation comprises only two chapter segments of an ongoing project: the monumental Superfictional World Atlas. Already twenty years in the making, Guerreiro do Divino Amor turns their lens of sharp irony against not just Switzerland’s cultural myths, but also takes the opportunity to roast others accordingly. Balancing cutting-edge technologies, heavy melodrama, and theatrics in this critique of politics, religion, banking, and the role of the media, these works stand as a hard-won testament to the labor of their creation as highly researched sleek productions of the highest magnitude. Viewers can decide for themselves if they respond with a hearty laugh, grave indignation, or are mesmerized by the phantasmagoria before their eyes.
With the biennale’s theme particularly resonant for the Turkish artist Gülsün Karamustafa, Hollow and Broken: A State of the World uses a particular lens on materiality as a metaphor for our concepts of infrastructure systems. A second-floor space in the Arsenale spans both sides of the spacious pavilion–exterior wall to exterior wall–leaving ample space for performance to occur between and betwixt the sculptures. Using mold-cast plastic components to create a negative-space framing-device in the silhouette of a classical column, materials of industrial construction are foregrounded for this display of metaphorical poetics. Steel containers for construction waste–or perhaps to transport metal ore from within mines–shallowly filled with broken shards of Muranese factory glass waste, the Turkish Pavilion is a site for literally ‘holding space’ to critique European rhetoric of classical hegemony. Karamustafa’s emphasis on the immaterial and conceptual aims of the exhibition does rise to the occasion stirring critical reflections within viewers, while aesthetically remaining confoundingly elegant, enigmatic, and poetically sparse. This is an effective arena to invite the art world’s key players to reconsider the foundations of development and capital that underpin our current systems of labor.
Labyrinth structures and architectonic installations were a repeating trope throughout many pavilions’ presentations at the biennale, but most palpably showcased within the Arsenale. Visitors even jokingly inquired, “is this the architecture biennale? Did I get the year wrong?” However, understandably, a diverse range of artists explore themes of the physical displacement of a foreigner in their next national context, as a bodily exclusion from the center to the peripheries of unfamiliar bureaucratic systems. Of these clustered experiences forcing viewers to reflect inward upon their ambulation through many narrow disjointed pathways, one expression of this format felt particularly multilayered in its discursive impact: that of Manal AlDowayan’s Shifting Sands: A Battle Song.
Representing Saudi Arabia AlDowayan centers upon the role of women in the public sphere. Arabic texts silkscreened onto curving softly stuffed panels describe accounts of Saudi Arabian women. This monumental fiber art installation of raw woven silk unfolds as biomorphic stacks of fungi-like panels that emerge from the floor. These taller-than-life-size planes of unbleached natural fiber dwarf the viewer vertically, but subtly seem to spread open as leaves of a book. Just slightly ajar each panel reveals a text hidden in between, tempting the viewer to crack open its spine to devour the entire page. Each of the artist’s arrangements–one smaller in scale than the next–were also directly inspired by the crystalline structures of desert sand roses nestled upon each other. These hard minerals’ ‘petals’ become a metaphor for the text’s fossilized state of archaic views illustrating gender bias, while simultaneously connecting the feminine to the floral: albeit one defined by its survivalist rigidity due to a lack of available materials. However there is optimism present in AlDowayan’s choice of mineral structures which continue to grow, and here define women’s societal impact as heroically immovable, forged against all odds in the arid desert, and which remain undeniably grand.
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