Strangers Everywhere, the title chosen for this new edition of the Venice Biennale which takes over from the Milan Design Week which ends this weekend. Open to the public from tomorrow Saturday 20 April to Sunday 24 November, the sixtieth edition of the International Art Exhibition this year presents a new project entitled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano
Pedrosa and produced by the Venice Biennale. The exhibition will take place between
Central Pavilion at the Giardini and the Arsenale in two distinct nuclei: Nucleo
Contemporary and Historical Core. The title Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners
Everywhere is taken from a series of works created since 2004 by the Claire Fontaine collective, born in Paris and based in Palermo: neon sculptures of various colors bearing the words “Foreigners Everywhere” in different languagesan expression taken from the name of a Turin collective of the same name involved, in the early 2000s, in the fight against racism and xenophobia in Italy.
«The expression Foreigners Everywhere has more than one meaning. First of all, it means that wherever you go and wherever you are you will always meet foreigners: they are and we are everywhere – explained Adriano Pedrosa -. Secondly, that regardless of one’s location, deep down one is always truly a foreigner.”
In the contemporary core, the exhibition will focus on the meanings linked to the term “foreigner”: the Italian term stranger, as well as the Portuguese estrangeiro, the French étranger and the Spanish extranjero are all connected on an etymological level respectively to the words strange, estranho, étrange and extraño, or to the stranger. This connection will be deepened by works that, at the same time, will focus on further connected subjects: the queer artist, who moves within different sexualities and genders, the outsider artist, on the margins of the art world, as the self-taught or folk artist, the indigenous artist, often treated as a stranger in his own land. The production of these four subjects will be the fulcrum of the new edition and will constitute the Contemporary Nucleus. The Historical Core will be composed of 20th century works from Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Arab world. This section will be divided into three rooms located in the Central Pavilion: the Portraits room, the one dedicated to Abstractions and a third designed for the Italian artistic diaspora around the world.
The Exhibition will be accompanied by 88 National Participations in the historic Pavilions at the Giardini, at the Arsenale and in the historic center of Venice. The Italian Pavilion at the Tese delle Vergini in the Arsenale, supported and promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, is curated by Luca Cerizza, with the Due qui / To hear project by the artist Massimo Bartolini, which includes contributions specially created by musicians, male and female writers. The Municipality of Venice also participates with its own Pavilion, the Venice Pavilion, in the Gardens of
Saint Helena.
«During the research – declared Pedrosa – two different but related elements emerged in a rather organic way which were developed to the point of establishing themselves as the leitmotif of the entire exhibition. The first is textiles, explored by many artists involved, starting from key figures in the Historical Nucleus, up to many authors present in the Contemporary Nucleus. Such works reveal an interest in craftsmanship, tradition and the handmade, as well as in techniques that, in the broader field of fine art, have sometimes been considered other or foreign, foreign or strange. A second element is represented by the artists – many of whom are indigenous – linked
by blood ties. Also in this case tradition plays an important role: the transmission of knowledge and practices from father or mother to son or daughter or between brothers and relatives.”
Tags: Foreigners theme edition starting weekend Textile craftsmanship handmade among protagonists
