Foreigners Everywhere redefines belonging at Venice Biennale Arte 2024
Visual Atelier 8 had the pleasure to visit Venice Biennale Arte 2024, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, as press. Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere positions foreignness not as a theme to illustrate, but as a structural condition that defines how the exhibition is experienced. Presented across Venice, between the Giardini and the Arsenale, this edition does not construct a singular narrative; it reorganizes contemporary art through a plurality of voices shaped by displacement, identity, and cultural memory.
The title operates through a deliberate ambiguity: wherever one goes, there are foreigners, and at the same time, each individual remains foreign within a broader system. This tension is not resolved across the exhibition, but sustained. Moving between spaces, the perception of foreignness shifts continuously, appearing as migration, linguistic distance, or a more internal condition that exists independently of geography. The transition from one work to another does not produce contrast, but accumulation.
Pedrosa’s curatorial direction of Venice Biennale Arte is precise in its intent. By foregrounding artists historically positioned outside dominant Western narratives, the exhibition recenters practices from the Global South, Indigenous communities, and diasporic contexts without framing them as peripheral. Many of the participants are exhibiting in Venice for the first time, yet their presence does not read as introduction, but as a redefinition of the exhibition’s core structure.
This approach is reinforced through a layered spatial and temporal construction. Historical works are presented alongside contemporary practices, establishing connections that do not separate past and present, but allow them to coexist as part of the same condition. Archival materials do not function as reference points; they operate as active elements that continue to shape current artistic production. The exhibition unfolds as a continuous field where time is compressed and redistributed.
Across painting, installation, moving image, and large-scale environments, the works articulate foreignness through material and spatial strategies. Some projects remain intimate, grounded in personal narratives, while others expand into broader geopolitical realities. What connects them is not a shared aesthetic, but a shared position. The Venice Biennale avoids spectacle, requiring a slower engagement where meaning emerges through repetition and proximity.
Experiencing Foreigners Everywhere as press reveals an exhibition that resists simplification and rejects closure. The Venice Biennale Arte 2024 does not attempt to define foreignness or translate it into a fixed narrative. Instead, it leaves it unresolved, positioning it as a permanent and shared condition. In doing so, the exhibition reframes contemporary art as a space where difference is not interpreted from a distance, but continuously produced from within.
Photography by Alexandr Tcaciuc
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