The Venice Biennale

Yesterday I had maybe the best art viewing experience of my life.

When we first arrived in Venice, I saw a sign for the Venice Biennale outside of the train station and I was shocked. I don’t know why it didn’t click in my head that I was in Venice and it was an even year, and therefore the Venice Biennale would be happening while I was there— but it was an amazing surprise to stumble upon!

I had learned about the Venice Biennale in my AP Art History class (per usual), in reference to Yayoi Kusama’s Narcissus Garden Exhibit at the 33rd Venice Biennale in 1966 (pictured below). I didn’t really understand what the whole thing was at first, with the different pavilions and everything. Even after doing research, I didn’t fully comprehend the scope of this monumental art exhibition until yesterday.

For those who don’t know, the Venice Biennale is one of the world’s largest and most prestigious contemporary art exhibits that happens every other year. The area of the exhibit is split into 29 different ”pavilions”, or buildings, which correspond to individual countries. Each country has an exhibit by an artist of that origin, or by an artist from a land colonized by that country. Each year it has a theme, and artists take a wild multimedia approach to expressing it. It’s kind of like the Met Gala of the art world.

As soon as I realized it was happening, I knew I had to go. I managed to convince my travel mates to come with me, despite the 16 euro entrance fee (and that’s the student discount, it’s normally 30). They were troopers, but I think we all ended up enjoying it a lot. My main lesson from it was don’t try to do it all in one day— there’s just too much. There’s a reason why there’s an option to get a 3 day pass. With art as contemporary as this, the exhibitions often involve sensory overstimulation that can be a lot to view even one at a time— so going to the 29 different pavilions was a hefty task. At the end of the day, I think we managed 23 before we were completely brain dead.

The theme this year was Foreigners Everywhere, which was quite fitting for us on our gap year. The curator was Adriano Pedrosa, whose goal was to “investigate the idea of living on the margins, whether as an outsider, a new arrival, or an indigenous person.” His choices came together to execute that mission beautifully— each pavilion showed a diversity of ideas, cultures, colors, sounds and feelings. As my friend Cassie said, we had never felt more intellectually stimulated by an art exhibit than this one.

The first pavilion that really stood out to me was the Poland pavilion. It was comprised of a room with a large screen on either end, with microphones in front of each. One screen was video of Ukrainian refugees in 2022, while the other screen was of Ukrainian refugees in 2024. In the videos, they’re mimicking the sounds of various aspects of the war with their mouths, and then they would say “repeat after me.” In the sign outside, it told the audience to go up to the microphones and mimic the sounds along with the people on the screen. But inside, everyone sat in the chairs in the center in silence— nobody going forward to the microphones. At least to my perception, this was an intentional part of the design. They knew no one would want to be the first person to go up and speak these noises into the microphones in front of everyone else in the room. This in itself mimicked the reality of war: people on the outside are content to just watch, without actually taking action or speaking out. We choose comfort, not risk. Coming out of this exhibit was a bit haunting. We were all deep in silent reflection, which you know is a marker of a good art exhibit.

We continued on into many other pavilions, notably including the United States. Ours was a neoclassical-style rainbow building— it felt very fitting. It looked a bit like a Monticello in candy land. The exhibit in the U.S. combined indigenous art styles with modern American moments, and it had a video installation at the end that I really I appreciated. I wish we had come to the U.S. pavilion earlier so that I had felt a little less brain dead and a little more capable of reading the blurbs, but it was a super cool experience nonetheless.

One of my other favorite pavilions was the Brazilian pavilion, now rebranded as the Hãhãwpuá Pavilion in honor of the precolonial name for the land. Its excellence may of course have something to do with Adriano Pedrosa (the curator of the whole Biennale) being Brazilian. The main room in this building is focused on mantles made by the indigenous community of Tupinambá, presenting one such cape centered in the middle of a tribal arrangement of empty mantle stands (It’s kind of hard to describe and I didn’t get a picture). The empty stands represent all the 17th century Tupinambá mantles that live in foreign museums, in a bid for them to be repatriated. Included in the exhibit was some of the dialogue between a member of the community, Glicéria Tupinambá, and the museums holding the mantles. Repatriation of art is an especially relevant topic in modern art history discussions, and I appreciated seeing this modern take on incorporating the statement into an art exhibit itself. I’ve included more photos below from other parts of the pavilion.

I would say our least favorite pavilion by far was the Switzerland pavilion. To encapsulate it in one adjective, it was horrifying. I try not to hate on art that I don’t fully understand, so I won’t go too hard here, but it was a lot for our 3-hours-spent-in-the-Biennale minds to deal with. Lots of neon lights, lots of noise, and a “mascot” of a kind that was a singing naked opera woman with some interesting biology happening. It was a very maximalist exhibit, poking fun at stereotypes, tourist gags, greek mythology, and other things that I’m sure I didn’t understand. I wish I could attach a video, but I can’t without uploading it to youtube so here is a picture that sums it all up. Keep in mind you really need to be able to hear the audio to understand the breadth of this experience!

I won’t go on and on about each pavilion, partially because most of them feel a bit like a fever dream, but I did come away with the distinct impression that I had to come back. I think I could return to this exhibit of Foreigners Everywhere 100 more times and still learn something new on every run through. For anyone thinking about making a trip to venice, do it— and not for the canals (though they are beautiful).

I’ve included more photos below from the other sections, including the International Building, which was a whole different ball game. Now that I’m publishing, it is no longer the “yesterday” of the first sentence that this happened, but I’m feeling new sense of wonder looking at these photos again.

On that note, apologies for this extremely irregular posting schedule. I’ve been a bit absent, because surprise, surprise— I got sick again! Tissues are my new European essential. That being said, I’m getting better and hope to finish writing up my other thoughts from Italy to post soon. I must confess I’ve also been reading a very good book that hasn’t exactly been motivating me to write instead of read, but I’m staying strong here.

Hope you enjoyed! Here’s an article if you’d like to read more about some of the highlighted exhibits:https://news.artnet.com/art-world/best-pavilions-2024-venice-biennale-2471412 

See you next time.

Emmaline