The Venice Biennale: Our selection of artists

The Venice Biennale occurs every two years and stands as a significant event in the contemporary art scene.
The 60th International Art Exhibition, titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, will open to the public from Saturday April 20 to Sunday November 24, 2024, at the Giardini and the Arsenale; it will be curated by Adriano Pedrosa and organised by La Biennale di Venezia. The pre-opening will take place on April 17, 18 and 19; the awards ceremony and inauguration will be held on 20 April 2024.

As a guiding principle, the Biennale Arte 2024 has favored artists who have never participated in the International Exhibition—though a number of them may have been featured in a National Pavilion, a Collateral Event, or in a past edition of the International Exhibition.

Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere, the title of the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, is drawn from a series of works started in 2004 by the Paris-born and Palermo-based Claire Fontaine collective. The works consist of neon sculptures in different colours that render in a growing number of languages the words “Foreigners Everywhere”. The phrase comes, in turn, from the name of a Turin collective who fought racism and xenophobia in Italy in the early 2000s.

«The expression Stranieri Ovunque - explains Adriano Pedrosa - has several meanings. First of all, that wherever you go and wherever you are you will always encounter foreigners— they/we are everywhere. Secondly, that no matter where you find yourself, you are always truly, and deep down inside, a foreigner.»

The Exhibition will also include 88 National Participations in the historic Pavilions at the Giardini, at the Arsenale and in the city centre of Venice.

The Italian Pavilion at the Tese delle Vergini in the Arsenale, sponsored and promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, is curated by Luca Cerizza. The project Due qui / To hear by the artist Massimo Bartolini includes contributions specifically created by musicians and writers.

The City of Venice participates with its own pavilion, the Venice Pavilion, at the Giardini of Sant’Elena.

Docent is pleased to provide you with a curated selection of the greatest pavilions fo this edition. Look below!

The Peruvian artist Sandra Gamarra, represents Spain at the Venice Biennale. It is the first time in 60 editions that an artist not born in Spain has done so. Her project, 'Pinacoteca migrante', questions colonial narratives and historical modes of representation. The project is curated by Agustín Pérez Rubio, with a long career in Latin American art as artistic director of the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (Malba) or as curator of the Chile pavilion at the 2018 Biennial.

In ODORAMA CITIES, a new commission by Korean artist KOO JEONG A, the artist will delve into the nuances of our spatial encounters, investigating how we perceive and recollect spaces, with a particular emphasis on how scents, smells, and odours contribute to these memories.

After a public open call issued by KOO and the pavilion curatorial team via social media, advertisements, one-to-one meetings, Koreans and non-Koreans with a relationship to Korea submitted descriptions in response to one central question: “What is your scent memory of Korea?” This process generated more than 600 written statements recollecting the country through the prism of scent. KOO and the pavilion curators tasked and collaborated with perfumers to translate and categorise these memories into seventeen distinct scent experiences created specifically for the pavilion.

The installation artist is drawn to organically occurring forms and structures within the natural world, but he isn’t afraid to mix up botanical influences with man-made objects. Many will know him for his lamps, in which wires and bulbs have been tangled up with the leaves and stems of plants.