An outsider's guide to the 2024 Venice Biennale
Speed boats, spritz and Swedish royals—plus 5 exhibition highlights.
An outsider’s guide to the Venice Biennale
“My arrival at the Venice Biennale happens before leaving British soil. Arriving at Stanstead airport at 6am (of course I am on the cheapest flight possible) I realise that the spectacle of the global art world which takes place every other year in an ancient Italian city really begins closer to home, in the unglamorous, air-conditioned cabin of a Ryanair plane.”
Now online, art writer Lydia R. Figes pens a dispatch from the 2024 Venice Biennale. Themed ‘Foreigners-Everywhere’ by the Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa, Figes explores her highlights from this year’s Biennale, as well as reporting on openings and murmurings (it turns out that the Björk DJ rumour isn’t just a PR stunt). Yet Figes finds the theme reflected in more than just the art, finding herself both enchanted and estranged from the art world she works in.
“I sit on a bench to have a moment of respite and eat my lunch, before realising I had sat in the middle of a performance art piece, in which individuals clad in Lycra uttered incomprehensible sounds into confused-looking crowds,” she writes. “My half-eaten panino became part of the panorama. In moments like this, my enthusiasm is replaced with the existential question: What are we all really here for?”
Read the full story online now
5 shows you can’t miss at the 2024 Venice Biennale
John Akomfrah, Listening All Night to the Rain, British Pavilion, Giardini
Julien Creuzet, Attila cataract your source at the feet of the green peaks will end up in the great sea blue abyss where we drowned in the tidal tears of the moon, French Pavilion, Giardini
Yu Hong, Another One Bites the Dust, Chiesetta della Misericordia, Cannaregio
Martha Jungwirth, Heart of Darkness, Palazzo Cini, Dorsoduro
Otobong Nkanga in From Ukraine: Dare to Dream, Official Collateral Event, presented by Victor Pinchuk Foundation, Palazzo Contarini Polignac, Dorsoduro
