In the early 2000s, Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill stumbled across a pamphlet issued by anti-racism activists in Turin signed with the cryptically affirmative ‘Stranieri Ovunque’, or ‘Foreigners Everywhere’. The pair later went on to create the conceptual art collective Claire Fontaine in 2004 and reified this statement, translating it into a work of art. Indeed, the collective rendered the words ‘Stranieri Ovunque’ in neon signs in different languages, including indigenous and extinct ones. These neon structures, illuminated as if they were subtitles of the places they adorn, have now been crafted in 60 different languages, and at the Biennale, oversee the docks of the Arsenale.
This year marked the 60th International Exhibition of The Venice Biennale, and its curator, Adriano Pedrosa, draws from Claire Fontaine’s work and has titled it Stranieri Ovunque. Pedrosa’s title operates on two levels: while it recognises the inevitability of encountering those who are ‘foreign’, in parallel, and perhaps more importantly, it contends that the condition of being foreign at some level is inherent to the human experience.
“The expression Stranieri Ovunque 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”. – Adriano Pedrosa.
Pedrosa’s interpretation of ‘foreignness’, however, transcends culture and geography, and the artwork he has chosen extends to a plethora of artistic manifestations of ‘otherness’. After all, the Italian word ‘straniero’ is etymologically connected to the Latin ‘extraneus’, signifying ‘stranger’ or ‘outsider’. Thus, the so-called Nucleo Contemporaneo of the exhibition unfolds around this mould of ‘foreignness’ and focuses on “the queer artist, who has moved within different sexualities and genders, often being persecuted or outlawed; the outsider artist, who is located at the margins of the art world, much like the self-taught artist, the folk artist and the artista popular; the indigenous artist, frequently treated as a foreigner in his or her own land.”
The exhibition then proceeds to the Nucleo Storico, in which works from 20th century Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia are gathered, as well as works by diasporic Italian artists exhibited in a room named Italians Everywhere. This perhaps acts as a subtle reminder to those who forget, or choose to forget, that Italy has historically been the origin of emigration and that its position as a destination of mass immigration is a fairly recent phenomenon.
Transnational migration lies at the core of Bouchra Khalili’s awe-inspiring The Mapping Journey Project (2008-11). Khalili’s work features a series of video projections of migrants drawing their perilous journeys into Europe onto maps in permanent marker, while their faces remain unseen. These maps, official documents symbolic of authority, become canvasses upon which the individuals claim agency over their own narratives. Thus, they erase the arbitrary boundaries and restrictive conceptions of identity and nation-state that the maps impose. Khalili interestingly, and very much intentionally, provides very little information to the viewer: a map, a hand, a pen, and a voice are all that feature. The viewer therefore plays an active role as the stories unravel before them and must construct their own understanding through the lens of their personal perceptions and experience. This creates a powerfully thought-provoking superposition: the intersection of institutional power, the personal narrative, and the subjective interpretation of the viewer. This work of art, which can only be experienced ‘in the making’, is then crystallised in prints depicting the individuals’ journeys as constellations.
Pacita Abad, instead, chooses to explore the hardships of integration. Her searingly vivid Filipinas in Hong Kong (1995), one of my personal favourites, juxtaposes the skyscrapers and the city of Hong Kong plastered in the names and logos of luxury brands to depictions of Filipino workers on their day off. Truly a tale of two cities, Abad’s canvas brings together parallel worlds that are kept apart yet are intrinsically interconnected. This is displayed alongside a huge trapunto (method of quilting) of a lady in a sarong that matches a Bulls basketball jersey and a Yankees baseball cap which is thoughtfully titled You Have to Blend in Before You Stand Out (1995).
I was particularly struck by Ivan Argote and La Chola Poblete’s highly unusual and provocative works. In his mesmerising video, Paseo, Madrid (2022), Argote stages the removal of Christofer Columbus’ statue in Madrid’s Plaza de Colon from its public pedestal. The statue is toppled and subsequently carted around the city on the back of a truck, as if it were being exiled. Argote’s playfully ironic fiction was reminiscent to me of the debate sparked in the UK after the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston, a colonialist and slave trader, in Bristol in 2020. The months that ensued saw an unprecedented public appraisal of the legacy of Britain’s colonial past and involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. Activists all over the country demanded that tributes to enslavers and colonialists be removed or altered. This is perhaps the kind of conversation that Argote hopes to initiate through his interventions on public monuments that challenge hegemonic narratives and address historical or social injustices.
I was equally fascinated by La Chola Poblete’s conceptually dense, mind map-like watercolour compositions, on which the artist orchestrates hybrid beings into coexistence with abstract images, religious iconography, and pop motifs. This chaotic amalgamation poignantly reflects the struggle of the artist to reconcile different facets of their identity and the cathartic role art plays. Despite being slightly dissonant or tenuously linked to the title at times, the exhibition successfully implores us to question our convictions and to connect with ‘otherness’ through art. This chorus of voices expressing their ‘otherness’ somehow reinforces our shared human experience.
In this vein, it is perhaps interesting to consider the Ancient Greek notion of ‘xenia’, deriving from the word ‘xenos’ meaning ‘foreign’ or ‘strange’. This deeply ingrained ethical value marked a quasi-sacred bond between guest and host rooted in mutual respect. The foreigner, rather than someone to fear, was someone to whom hospitality was owed. However, and rather sadly, when thinking of this the only word that really springs to mind is xenophobia, the dislike or prejudice against those who are foreign. Ultimately, the title ‘Stranieri Ovunque’ originates from a collective advocating against xenophobia, and this year’s Biennale highlights that ‘otherness’ can and should be embraced in all its forms.
Hello! My name is Paolo, and I am a first-year in the HEC-Bocconi Double Program. As a child, I fell in love with reading thanks to Cressida Cowell’s ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ and never stopped; nowadays, Kazuo Ishiguro, Philip Kerr, and Donna Tartt are amongst my favourites. My main interests in writing lie in politics and political economics, society, culture, and everything in between. When I am not reading, I am playing football or exploring my newfound cooking skills as a uni student.
