Sandy Adsett, Brett Graham, Fred Graham, Mataaho Collective and Selwyn Wilson (1927–2002 ) were announced on 31 January as exhibitors in the Curator’s International Exhibition at the 60th Biennale Arte, which takes place alongside the national pavilions. They will each present works responding to the theme of this edition, Stranieri Ovunque, Foreigners Everywhere, as conceived by curator Adriano Pedrosa, who steps in from his post at São Paulo’s MASP.

The exhibition follows Cecilia Alemani’s triumphant 2022 showing, The Milk of Dreams, which was widely praised as “breaking a mold” by putting the spotlight on women artists from around the globe and tracking a surrealist sensibility among them; “[a] Surrealism used to imagine and represent worlds whose source sprang from elsewhere than the tinny refrains of certain childhood trauma and its well-mapped territorializations,” as Quinn Latimer wrote, reviewing the exhibition for eFlux. 

In a statement about the forthcoming edition made in June 2023, current Biennale President Roberto Cicutto suggested that the 60th edition would continue the commitment to moving beyond the ‘well-mapped’, saying, “I believe that changing the point of view from which to talk about contemporary art is what an institution with the international standing of La Biennale di Venezia must do. And this is not just an aesthetic point of view, but a geographical one as well, just like in film when you shoot a reverse shot of the same scene,” highlighting the appointment of a Latin American (home of Third Cinema and the originary reverse shot) curator for the first time in the Biennale’s 128 year history. 

Pedrosa’s chosen theme stakes similar goals. Stranieri Ovunque, Foreigners Everywhere references the neon sculpture series of the Palermo-based collective Claire Fontaine and the anarchist collective, Stranieri Ovunque, who opposed racism and xenophobia throughout the 2000s. Iterations of Claire Fontaine work have appeared worldwide since 2005, with each rendering the phrase ‘Foreigners Everywhere’ in a new language. Presented at Ōtautahi Christchurch’s CoCA in 2015, the sign read in Te Reo ‘Kei Nga Wahī Katoa a Tauiwi’, or ‘White Sails Everywhere’. 

The work, Pedrosa explains, invokes the common refrain of xenophobia, usually uttered with distaste, “that wherever you go and wherever you are you will always encounter foreigners,” but undermines it with the assertion that “no matter where you find yourself, you are always, truly, and deep down inside, a foreigner.” He sees this duality as a rich entrypoint into the current moment, “a world rife with multiple crises concerning the movement and existence of people across countries, nations, territories and borders.”

Since the announcement of the theme midway through last year, these crises have intensified in unprecedented ways. The ongoing genocide in Gaza is likely to cast a shadow on this year’s event much like the war in Ukraine did in 2022, as is Giorgia Meloni’s staunchly nationalist government, who ran on an anti-migrant platform during the election of 2022 and has since implemented controversial legal restrictions on charities who operate rescue vessels in the Mediterranean. In October, her party, Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), rejoiced at the nomination of right-wing writer and journalist Pietrangelo Buttafuoco as the incoming President of the Biennale, set to take over from Cicutto in March. La Stampa reported that Raffaele Speranzon, Italian Senator for Fratelli d’Italia, said of Buttafuoco’s appointment, “the La Biennale Foundation has been considered by the left as a fiefdom in which to place friends and acolytes.” “Another glass ceiling has been broken,” he declared. 

While this is likely not the ‘reverse shot’ that Cicutto had anticipated and lends a jarring context to Pedrosa’s provocation, the announcement of the participating artists should ease speculation of a rightward turn in this edition of the Biennale. The Nucleo Contemporaneo will focus the four ‘subjects’ Pedrosa identified in his statement as bearers of foreignness in contemporary art: the queer artist, the outsider artist, the folk artist and the indigenous artist, Aotearoa’s all-Māori contingent being representative of the latter. 

Invited following Pedrosa’s scouting visit to the country in March 2023, this is the largest group of New Zealand artists ever invited to participate in the International Exhibition and, according to Caren Rangi, Chair of the Arts Council Toi Aotearoa, “a reflection of the ideas they are testing and the esteem that their work is held in.” Doubtless, as strong voices in Ngā Toi Māori, all of these artists are fitting representatives for Aotearoa on this important and fraught stage, not least in the absence of a national pavilion. Though full information about the works they will present are still to be released, Pedrosa paid mention to Mataaho in his initial comments; the collective will present a large-scale installation in the Arsenale’s Corderie, a cavernous hall first built in 1303 used to build mooring ropes, cables and ropes for ships departing Venice’s ancient trading port.