Venice Biennale, indigenous art protagonist of the Central Pavilion

The title chosen for this year’s Venice Biennale is more of a statement than usual: Foreigners Everywhere – Foreigners Everywhere. And he leads us to ask ourselves: who is the foreigner? The one that arrives at our home or are we when we travel? And is there a difference between those who travel for pleasure, for tourism, and those who travel to seek their fortune or to escape from a difficult situation? Or, again, what must it be like to feel like a foreigner in your own home?

«The expression Strangers Everywhere – explains Adriano Pedrosa, curator of the 2024 Art Biennale – has more than one meaning. First of all, it means that wherever you go and wherever you are you will always meet foreigners: I am/we are everywhere. Secondly, that regardless of one’s location, deep down one is always truly a foreigner.”

The exhibition Strangers Everywhere will therefore leave space and voice to artists who are themselves foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diasporic, emigrants, exiles and refugees, people who find themselves on the margins of the world and who are treated like foreigners in their own country. «I think we all feel like foreigners when we come and go from other places, geographically. However, I have many times felt like a foreigner in my homeland, because my work has not always been seen or perceived as a work of art” she tells us Julia Isidrez, one of the artists invited by Pedrosa belonging to the Guaranì people, in Paraguay. “In my country I often feel like an outsider. About 90% of the population is mixed, mainly Europeans and Guarani. However, over 80% of the lands and wealth are in the hands of 5% of the people, mostly of European origin alone.”

For the first time the Biennale will give voice to many artists who belong to peoples who, after having fought to conquer their rights, having resisted centuries of oppression, various genocides and having obtained ownership of the lands they have always inhabited, today – again – they are committed to forcefully resisting the theft of their lands and those rights. «I am not here to judge what is right and what is wrong – says Isidrez – I can say that the Guarani people have always seen the land and nature, as well as fauna and flora, as something that it belongs to everyone. The Guaranì have always been against land ownership. And my art, the way I work, my technique, which comes from my ancestors, is a way to resist what has happened to our land and our people in centuries past. It’s a way to keep it alive and strong.”