Venice Biennale, 2024

20 April – 24 November, 2024

Review by Halina Edwards

‘Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere’, is the title of this year’s Venice Biennale. Curated by the Brazilian artistic director, Adriano Pedrosa. The international exhibition features works by 331 artists, spread across national pavilions in the Giardini, and on display in the Arsenale. Further national pavilions and exhibitions are located throughout the city of Venice. As an artist who works with textiles, the prominence of textiles in the art world this year is exciting. In an episode of The Week in Art podcast, Pedrosa spoke about how textiles play a big part in this year’s curation, with the majority of the artworks shown being by artists living in, or from, the Global South.

The architecture greets you differently at the Arsenale – a complex of former armouries and shipyards. Detailed around me in the main building are works that are embroidered, wax-resisted, dyed or sewn, broadening my understanding of materiality and performance.

Film work by Sudanese-Norwegian artist Ahmed Umar, ‘Talitin (The Third)’ (2023) follows his body as he enacts a Sudanese bridal dance. Adorned in traditional Sudanese bridal clothing, jewellery and accessories, Umar moves honestly and poetically across the black background. It felt like witnessing a visual diary that documented a reclamation of space and an intimate conversation on preserving cultural histories that ‘nearly vanished due to growing shame’, as Umar put it in an Art Basel interview. Talitin, meaning ‘third’ in Arabic, is an insult, referring to ‘the third of the girls’, that is boys interested in activities seen performed by women in his family. Witnessing the bridal dances as a child, he was excluded from the dances once he reached puberty. Outside the screening is a display of the clothing and accessories worn in the performance, with film of mannequin hands that seem to pinch, tease and drape the cloth. 

Leaving the main building of the Arsenale, you walk through more pavilions and site-specific art on the grounds of the site. Triumphant in impact and scale, Lauren Halsey’s columns ‘keepers of the krown’ (2024) resemble relics from Ancient Egypt. Born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, where she and her family have lived for generations, Halsey is an artist who reimagines the relationship between architecture and community. The six columns are inscribed with faces, symbols and texts inspired by stories from people in her neighbourhood. The engravings on the columns represent a broader story that upholds the Black and African American diaspora. The monuments give power to people with so few monuments in the West that tell the story of our lives.

In both locations, Claire Fontaine’s neon installation pieces, ‘Foreigners Everywhere’ illuminate the entrance. Upon exiting the Arsenale, you spot the phrase again, in one of the languages spoken by the countries represented in this year’s Biennale, shimmering in the reflection of the water beneath it. With this Biennale being the most diverse to date, I hope that future Biennales will still show a large range of artists from various nationalities, regardless of the title binding them together. 

Halina Edwards

Halina Edwards is a designer with an interdisciplinary practice.