Thinking about collecting a Venezia the best of the world's production of visual arts on a central theme such as the one suggested by the Claire Fontaine collective, namely "Foreigners everywhere” without bringing with it the inevitable wake of the cruelties of the world grappling, today, with two wars, in Ukraine and Gaza, was mission impossible. Because where there is art there is, inevitably, politics, with all the baggage of sides and conflicts. And in this - it must be said - the Biennale has always played the role of even an uncomfortable witness to contemporary crises.
To be "Foreigners Everywhere - Foreigners everywhere” is in fact not the chronicle of a failure but an invitation to be masters of one's own destiny everywhere outside the well-defined borders of nations, cultures and even sexual orientations. “The expression 'Foreigners Everywhere – explained Pedrosa – has various meanings. It means that wherever you go and wherever you are you will always encounter foreigners: they are/we are everywhere. Secondly, that regardless of one's location, deep down one is always truly a foreigner."
Therefore the new president of the Biennale, Pierangelo Buttafuoco and the curator of the Visual Arts section, the Brazilian Adriano Pedrosa, they could not do anything other than indulge the "animal spirits" of creativity, leaving the curators of the individual national pavilions free to decide in full autonomy what to exhibit, whether to do it, how and when. Of course, times are dark and it's a bit shocking to see policemen in uniform wandering around the Pavilions of the Gardens or the rooms of the Arsenal, even if "for security reasons", especially now that the pavilions of Israel and Russia remain strongly "attention".
The Israeli pavilion awaits the release of the hostages
Il Israeli pavilion at the moment remains closed. At the entrance, in English, a sign is visible which reads: the pavilion will remain closed until "an agreement on the release of the hostages and a ceasefire" is reached in Gaza. The announcement (at least that's how it appears) comes from the Israeli artist Ruth Patir, whose three video art works make up the (M)otherland exhibition hosted in the Israel pavilion. “As human beings, women and citizens, we cannot be here when nothing changes in the reality of the hostages. Until the end we thought that we were heading in another direction and that there was an agreement on the table,” explained Patir, together with curators Mira Lapidot and Tamar Margalit. Reinforced surveillance has been planned for the Israeli pavilion with the presence of a garrison of Army soldiers, in addition to that ordinarily provided for in the Gardens for the entire duration of the Exhibition. A decision that does not involve, say the curators, “cancelling themselves or the exhibition; rather take a stand in solidarity with the families of the hostages" seized by Hamas on 7 October and "with the large Israeli community that is calling for change". And then, according to Patir, "Art can wait, but the people who live in hell can't."
At the same time at the Arsenale in the Archive on Disobedience throughout the world founded by Marco Scotini in 2005, among the documentary materials there is a video on which a flag of the Palestine with the writing: “boycott the Israeli pavilion”. There are some spectators who protest. There is certainly no lack of elements for discussion among artists and visitors at this 60th Art Biennale.
But art, with its power to intercept the future, seems to reveal what politics alone cannot resolve. The Amazonian paintings by the Mahku collective that cover the facade of the central pavilion of the Biennale evoke the spirits of the forest and invite the world to regain its balance.
For Ukraine, it is Poland that carries the baton of the invasion
And then Ukraine. The pavilion of the Russian Federation, all in white and light green, having been closed for two years, recalling the style of Russian architecture, is the Poland to witness the fight against the invasion of Ukraine. An audiovisual installation, "Repeat after me II", is exhibited, which represents a collective portrait of the witnesses of the ongoing war. Installation is created by the Ukrainian art collective Open Group and curated by Marta Czyż. The protagonists are civilian refugees who narrate their war experience through the sounds of the weapons that they have learned to recognise. The work is composed of two videos, produced in 2022 and 2024. The text of the sounds represents the description of the effect of a lethal weapon, offering the public a soundtrack of war. The sounds are played and the audience is invited to repeat them, creating a sort of military karaoke with the sounds of bullets, cannon fire, anti-aircraft sirens and explosions.
The Vatican with the title “With my eyes”. Pope Francis expected
Not just war but pain and marginalization in the exhibition “With my eyes”, curated by Chiara Parisi, director of the Center Pompidou-Metz, and by Bruno Racine, former president of the Center Pompidou and today director of Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana for the third participation of the Vatican at the Biennale Arte. The title “With My Eyes” refers both to a love sonnet by William Shakespeare and to verse 42.5 of the Book of Job, “My eye hath seen thee.” “The title evokes the poetic idea of seeing with other eyes, without prejudice,” explained Chiara Parisi. The location of the exhibition speaks for itself: it is the women's prison of Giudecca Venezia where Pope Francis will arrive in sight on the 28th. Welcoming him on the façade of the former convent now prison is a mega-installation by Cattelan, two feet of a reclining body, a grieving Christ. Pope Francis will be the first Pontiff to visit an exhibition at the Biennale. Two Patriarchs who later became Popes, namely Pope Roncalli Giovanni XXIII and then Pope Luciani, despite having been Patriarchs of Venice, had never crossed the doors of the Biennale.
And to think that in the first Biennial of 1895 it was the Curia of Venice and the Patriarch Giuseppe Sarto who attacked a work by Giacomo Grosso, “Supremo Convegno”, because it was “outrageous and badly interpreted by the people”. The Patriarch asked to remove it or to close the room where it was displayed. The case caused a sensation and all the newspapers of the time and art history texts talked about it. But those were different times…
