Are Foreigners Everywhere? Critical Musings on the Venice Biennale

Greer Goergen

Displaying Yinka Shonibare’s colorful life-size Refugee Astronaut (2015) and a suspended green neon sign reading “Foreigners Everywhere,” in front of a silver metallic textile from the Maori Mataaho Collective which spans both walls and ceiling, the entrance space at Adriano Pedrosa’s Nucleo Contemporaneo certainly primes the visitor for an innovative, multi-media experience.

The exhibition has brilliant moments and raises vital questions, yet at times reestablishes the art historical canon it seeks to dismantle, endangering the re-primitivizing of certain artists and favoring an essentializing rather than fluid identity structure. In the third room, the viewer is submersed in a mobile installation from an art collective, a social mediaesque constellation titled the Disobedience Archive, created by 56 artists and concentrating on political action and artistic practice – with two macro-sections Diaspora Activism and Gender Disobedience – which encompass Pedrosa’s representational goals. Perhaps inadvertently, the videos all underscore certain currents of pathos and ethos – characterizing gender and queer struggles more victoriously than issues of migrancy and otherness. This trend, whether intentionally or not, sets up the rest of the Nucleo Contemporaneo, begging the question, what are the effects of proposing gender and queer liberation as celebratory, and projecting migrancy or foreignness as hopeless and violent? And is this provocation deliberate, or a side effect which speaks to broader social issues? Additionally, the privileged circumstances of certain gender/ queer struggles arise in direct opposition to the harrowing depictions of colonialism and migrants which are to follow, which begets a third question, why are they all equally labeled “foreign,” and does this trivialize or level the diverse nature of experiences?

Pedrosa’s assertion that “We are all foreigners” is sometimes tired and flat, as there exists the potential to diminish the very real, terrifying experiences of exiles, weakening the concept in affirming its uncontested universality.

However, just beyond Disobedience Archive, is a particularly compelling positioning of window bars and exteriors represented in mosaics, photographs, and three-dimensional statues, cultivating the “outsider” in the viewer themself, indiscriminately positioning them on the exterior. Through this emphasis, three artists are put in dialogue to create poignant narratives of the outsider – reiterating that we, the visitor, are foreigners too. The curatorial decisions in this room subvert the viewers’ understanding of their place at the biennale itself, one of Pedrosa’s more successful approaches to his theme.

Kiluanji Kia Henda’s Geometric Ballad of Fear (2015), consisting of nine photographs capturing buildings’ facades through white painted window grates, documents protection and boundarymaking forms prevalent in the Global South. Directly adjacent to this, in The Geometric Ballad of Fear (Sardegna) (2019), Kia Henda superimposes geometric patterns – which resemble window bars from the first series – over black and white shots of the Mediterranean coast in Sardegna. The cliffs and crashing waves seem unconquerable, unnaturally captured behind cages of geometric lines and shapes, places which are nowhere near windows. This juxtaposition between protection and permeability comes to life in Kia Henda’s A Espiral do Medo (2022) in the center of the large hall, a rusted metal structure comprised of railings taken from buildings in Luanna; remnants originally used to protect those inside, now rendered a transparent ruin. This mediation on the “outsider” and protection stands just before Dana Awartani’s Come, Let Me Heal Your Wounds. Let Me Mend Your Broken Bones (2024), a massive construction hanging from the ceiling, composed of vibrant yellow, deep orange, and pale beige fabrics, in which labors of restorative care express destruction in the Middle East. Through dialogue between the works, the discussion of the outsider and landscape points to larger themes of colonialism. By positioning such a large and compelling piece in the context of the externality and vulnerability of Kia Henda’s works, and explicitly questioning who is denied or allowed entry to land or space, Pedrosa seems to further an argument on colonial possessions and subsequent destruction of land.

Awartani’s piece masterfully posits multiple meanings to the term “at risk,” as the textile material pieces, like the landscapes they represent, are also vulnerable – in a sense the medium is the message, as contemporary consumption habits mirror the violence and destruction of landscape and people rendered visible in the work. Also in the space is Lebanese artist Omar Mismar, whose mosaic works represent scenes of damage inflicted in Syria and its cultural sites, reappropriate Classical traditions and subvert and reclaim the ancient tesserae medium to also capture contemporary, queer spaces. Interestingly, the resurgence and reworking of ancient Greek myth is raised again in the Lebanese pavilion, through a chaotic, multimedia remodeling of Princess Europa’s myth. Pedrosa positions Mismar’s Hunting Scene (Still from a YouTube video of a barrel bomb falling on Daraya) (2019-2020), as the first of his works, which depicts decimation through the heartshaped bars on a balcony, implicating the viewer as an observer of the violence, both protected and mocked by the metal pieces, and juxtaposing the speed of digital creations with the slow mosaic medium. The room artfully subverts the visitor’s understanding of land ownership, emphasizing the violence and destruction in claiming land and authority, and asserting the outsider-nature of everyone.

The next room contains a series of large screens, Bouchra Khalili’s The Mapping Journey Project, (2008–11), which physically and symbolically traces individual migrants’ journeys, recording their hands as they sketch lines and discuss their movements across borders. Circular viewing benches accommodating almost two people accompany each screen but are distinctly awkward and uncomfortable. At first annoyed, I soon realized this was a factor of the installation itself; the viewer’s bodily discomfort is juxtaposed with the stories projected in front of them. I believe the artist is one who tackles the exhibition’s political queries directly. The basic maps could come from any American elementary school classroom, their colorful geographies hauntingly contrasted with the peril the migrants describe. However, I found The Constellation Series, celestial representations of the journeys, completely fell flat – cheesy and meaningless, they strip the expeditions of importance and memory, romanticizing and trivializing the dangerous stories into dreamy spaces. In what seems to be a specific subversion of the artist’s hand, it is interesting to consider how Khalili’s documentary aesthetics and deskilling is considered a formal idiom, and the juxtaposition of a certain “deskilling” of the Western art praxis in conjunction with the legibility of “primitive” painting.

The question of “primitivism” – and distinction between “artmaking and making” – looms large over the show, leaving the viewer to ask themself, does the work here reaffirm beliefs on textiles as crafts or elevate them within and expand the artistic canon? The movement of textiles from earlier classifications into the contemporary art world is now clearly accepted, but pieces here are not all successful; for example, Antonio Jose Guzman’s Orbital Mechanics (2024), in which a cacophony of sounds accompany draped blue textiles, does not necessarily speak to its stated function of exploring intercultural structures of connection across the Black Atlantic. Additionally, the specific focus on identity seems to contradict the concepts underpinning the show, that people and ideas are fluid and moving, and that foreignness is everywhere, a naive essentialism.

By insisting on the newness of every artist and listing out essentializing “facts” of their identity in each wall text, the curators take away from the art itself. Although these artistic inclusions are a significant step in the right direction, at times the curators limit the potential for expanding the art world and reestablish the artist and art as outsiders to tradition, prohibiting them from seamless ideological entry. This reinforces a canon rather than dismantling it – “this is the first time the work of (insert name) is presented at Biennale Arte” is repeated innumerably. Because art helps us to deny assigned bodies and geographies which work as tools for authorities that be, the repeated emphasis on identity markers does not always serve Pedrosa’s exhibition well. Xiyadie’s display exemplifies this obsession with categorization, as he is described as “a father, farmer, gay man, migrant worker, and artist,” and who has four large works of papercuts depicting graphic, phallic scenes of the artist’s queer awakenings and love, which ultimately seem less about the artist’s identity markers than complex musings of shame, guilt, and bliss.

Effectively, the show begs the question, is the artist’s identity more important than what they produce, as the geolocation of artistic voices can merge with political embodiment to virtualize artist positions. In this vein, Pedrosa fails when he includes a work for the sake of the themes it touches on or what the artist’s identity encapsulates. For example, Ahmed Umar’s Talitin, The Third (2023) records the artist performing a Sudanese bridal dance alone, floating amidst a black screen, purportedly reclaiming the practice after he was excluded for his gender. Not particularly intriguing or utilizing the video’s format to its full extent, the piece leaves the viewer unsatisfied, but checks a box regarding fluidity and gender identity, while not powerfully subverting or revolutionizing anything. Another work which completely missed the mark for me, a commentary on gender which completely lacks conceptual subtly, was Barbara Sanchez-Kane’s Prêt-a-Patria (2021), a fiberglass and steel sculpture of three militarily outfitted men connected vertically by a giant gold pole, whose gender identity is “subverted” by the inclusion of feminine products like lingerie and make-up. When fluid identity and artistic queering are relevant to a specific piece, such as Shalom Kufakwatenzi’s Under the Sea (2023) which uses the materiality and dynamics of loose fabric to beautifully and subtly mimic queerness, the significance is almost drowned out by the emphasis attached to identity in all the other works.

This identity-fixing rings especially true in Italians Everywhere, a somewhat kitsch take on the

Biennale’s overarching framework. The installation contains dozens of works by Italian diasporic artists, both contemporary and historical, with each work floating on a stand of glass, the painting’s information written on the reverse. Pedrosa intentionally makes spatial movement intrinsic to the room, literalizing the concept that we must revisit and reexamine history – the viewer looks at a work, moves past it to read the information, then returns once again to the front of the piece. I appreciate the curatorial work to recreate this movement physically and symbolically through history, insisting on the necessity of this framework in the future. Although, I think this technique would be more successful if the works were more thought provoking and the theme more compelling than Italians Everywhere, which seems again to trivialize the “outsider” and critically locates fixed identity at the center of an artist’s work and life. If those in the Italian diaspora fled, migrated, or chose to leave, Pedrosa is inadvertently demolishing their personal histories and the fluidity of their identities, forcing the artists and art into a specific category to meet the qualifications of his show.

The final room of the exhibition completely submerges the viewer before they exit. Wang Shui’s beautiful etchings cover the entirety of the windows – but are almost drowned out by a gimmicky LED structure at the back of the room, emitting low hums which don’t entirely convey any meaning but supposedly meditate on the dematerialization of identity. This last room feels – literally and symbolically – like a shot in the dark, a last-ditch attempt to ground the exhibition aesthetically in “contemporary art,” using a piece that looks and feels innovative at first glance. I don’t mind the juxtaposition between the dark installation and subsequent emergence and rebirth into daylight, but I wish the visitor was left with a more powerful piece, one which concentrated on the show’s political messaging or awed the visitor with its artistic endeavors. In light of the overarching materiality of the show –dominated by textiles and paintings – the decision to leave the viewer with an alternative form feels out of place; an attempt to showcase the curator’s contemporary eye for novelty.