What to see at the Venice Biennale this year

320 female artisans have been involved in handcrafting the works titled ‘Cosmic Garden’, part of the Venice Biennale 2024 launching on April 20 in Italy.

Photograph by Sahiba Chawdhary

The 60th edition of the Venice Biennale is launching in April, with a focus on marginalised groups, immigration and decolonisation.

This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).

“No matter where you find yourself, you’re always truly, and deep down inside, a foreigner,” says Adriano Pedrosa, artistic director of the São Paulo Museum of Art and curator of this year’s Venice Biennale — the show’s first from the Southern Hemisphere. Held every two years, the six-month festival champions the world’s greatest artistic talent through exhibitions and national pavilions. For its 60th edition, opening on 20 April this year, Pedrosa has chosen the title Stranieri Ovunque — ‘Foreigners Everywhere’ — and favoured artists that have had no or little involvement in the Biennale before. 

Taking place in Venice’s Giardini parkland and Arsenale shipyard areas, the expo will be formed of two parts: the Nucleo Contemporaneo, focusing on marginalised groups such as Indigenous, queer and outsider artists, and the Nucleo Storico, which will showcase 20th-century works from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, as well as the Italian artistic diaspora.

This years edition focuses on artists that have had no or little involvement in the Venice Biennale before.

Photograph by Carolyn Jenkins, Alamy

What to see at this year’s Venice Biennale?

Exile is a Hard Job

Turkish feminist artist Nil Yalter, one of two winners of this year’s Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement, will present a new version of her ongoing project, Exile is a Hard Job, which started in 1975. The installation tackles the issue of social ostracisation afflicting those living in foreign lands, through the medium of photos and drawings. It will be the first time the octogenarian has ever shown work at the Biennale, and it’ll be displayed in the Central Pavilion at the Giardini.

Cosmic Garden

Indian artists Madhvi and Manu Parekh have collaborated with Mumbai’s Chanakya School of Craft, which focuses on empowering women, for this showcase at Venice’s Salone Verde. Paintings and sculptures inspired by Indian culture will be centred around expressionism, modernism and female deities, and will be presented along with reimaginings of the works as hand-embroidered pieces. Some 320 female artisans have been involved in handcrafting the works, which use organic materials such as silk.

Ka’a Pûera: we are walking birds

The Brazil Pavilion will be renamed the Hãhãwpuá Pavilion this year, for a takeover by Glicéria Tupinambá — an artist, activist and representative of the Tupinambá Indigenous community of Serra do Padeiro and Olivença, from Southern Bahia — along with two other Indigenous artists, Olinda Tupinambá and Ziel Karapotó. Hãhãwpuá is an Indigenous name for the lands that became Brazil, and the exhibition will confront the marginalisation of Brazil’s Indigenous communities since colonisation.

Published in the April 2024 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).

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