The Venice Art Biennale celebrates its 60th anniversary. There have been times, particularly over the last 10 years, that this illustrious event has reacted to globalisation with the feel of a thematic art project. And yet, this year’s international presentation of art and culture has a Latin American curator (the first!) Brazilian Adriana Pedrosa. His mission is one of consideration, empathy and inclusion. There were many more African, Latin American, and Asian artists than ever before and the most significant number of African pavilions (54, but the most so far!) in evidence. Sophie Kazan was in Venice as the fair opened. She reviews some of the works by African artists in the fair’s main exhibitions curated by Pedrosa, a selection of her top pavilions, and some of the lateral events taking place around Venice.
Gerard Sekoto, Self-Portrait, 1947. Oil on canvas on board, 45.7 x 35.6cm. The Kilbourn Collection. 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, ‘Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere’. Photo by: Matteo de Mayda. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.
“Foreigners Everywhere, Stanieri Ovunque” – is the theme of this year’s 60th Art Biennale in Venice. This phrase is borrowed from an anarchic Italian artistic collective that fought racism and xenophobia with the idea that everyone is a stranger somewhere. In his curatorial mission statement for the Biennale, Pedrosa goes one step further, including notions of race, gender, religion, nationality and socio-politics. This year’s Biennale is, therefore, a revelation. In contrast, past biennales have only included limited representation from the Global South; this year’s offering was extremely rich in content as the margins and hitherto considered marginal artists took a central role. Pedrosa’s biennale exhibitions drew together a spectacular range of artists and contexts within a large pavilion in the Giardini gardens of the Biennale and the halls of Venice’s armoury and historic shipyard – the Arsenale. He presented two nuclei concepts: “Nucleo Storico” and “Nucleo Contemporanio“, which focus on work from a global modernist past and a contemporary and diasporic present. There is a strong emphasis on artists from the Global South, particularly creators who have never exhibited at Venice before, to redress the balance of the Western hold over ‘modern’ art historical narratives in a small way. The breadth of colour, figurations and representations by artists from across the globe is awe-inspiring as the visitor picks up on the foreign-ness or similarity of work made in a similar year or a different decade, the same location or a different continent in wild juxtaposition, each with specific thoughts and political intent. For example, South Africa’s Gerard Sekoto’s Self Portrait (1947) is a boldly painted study of the artist’s face, his solitary air, and questioning expression hinting at the political mood in South Africa ahead of the country’s 1948 election win for Apartheid.
Uzo Egonu, Guinean Girl, 1962. Oil on canvas, 76 x 63.5cm. The Estate of the Artist, London. 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, ‘Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere’. Photo by: Matteo de Mayda. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.
Ben Enwonwu, The Dancer (Agbogho Mmuo – Maiden Spirit Mask), 1962. Oil on canvas, 93 x 62cm. Ben Uri Gallery and Museum. 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, ‘Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere’. Photo by: Matteo de Mayda. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.
Two Nigerian artists’ works from the same year (1962) also stood out. Guinea Girl (1962), an oil on canvas painting by Uzo Egonu, is a study of a woman in West African costume and jewellery, looking at the viewer across a table with a steady, knowing gaze. The young artist painted this when he was living in the UK, and the Guinea Girl could be a reference to the artist’s vision of Africa and female members of this family or familiarities of home. Ben Enwonwu’s The Dancer (1962) celebrates African identity with colour, pattern and movement. Enwonwu trained in the UK at Goldsmith’s College, then at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford and the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He gained great acclaim as a ‘new’ post-colonial African with paintings celebrating traditional beliefs and Igbo culture. The Dancer is a brightly coloured masked figure engaged in the coming-of-age masquerade Agbogho Mmuo. Abstract works by artists such as Moroccan Mohamed Melehi’s Composition (1968) are closely linked to post-colonial struggles, the need to break free from Western art thinking and embrace indigenous Moroccan forms and materials. Melehi’s Composition focuses on colourful, calligraphic shapes and lines familiar to woven rugs or henna body art, common in indigenous Amazigh designs, which Melehi translated into abstract forms.
Mohamed Melehi, Composition, 1968. Oil on canvas, 89.8 x 199.6cm. Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar. 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, ‘Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere’. Photo by: Matteo de Mayda. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.
Leilah Babirye, Namasole Wannyana, Mother of King Kimera from the Kuchu Royal Family of Buganda, 2021. 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, ‘Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere’. Photo by: Marco Zorzanello. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.
In the “Nucleo Contemporanio” portion of the Biennale exhibition, visitors are greeted by Yinka Shonibare’s Refugee Astronaut (2015-). This solitary life-size figure of an astronaut in Shonibare’s characteristic ‘African’ batik fabric, with a string sack of possessions slung over his shoulder, has the air of a faceless refugee or a survivor, trudging towards the pavilion’s first exhibition hall as if escaping a cataclysmic disaster. “Most of these artists are being exhibited together for the first time,” said Pedrosa, suggesting that bringing together so many artists from the Global South might answer some of the world’s problems. “…We will learn from these unforeseen juxtapositions in the flesh, which will then hopefully point towards new connections, associations, and parallels much beyond the rather straightforward categories that I have proposed.” Leilah Babirye’s Namasole Wannyana, Mother of King Kimera from the Kuchu Royal Family of Buganda (2021), is a group of figures inspired by the artist’s Bantu heritage. These focus on concepts of gender and queer ideologies within a traditional context. Made of carved wood, with additions in metalwork, ceramics and paint, these figures have an abstract and summary appearance. Yet, the artist has imbued with personal attributes, such as metal cogs like earrings in their heads, a wrench-shaped fixture, or a round handle.
Kudzanai Chiurai, We Live in Silence Chapters 1-7), 2017. 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, ‘Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere’. Photo by: Marco Zorzanello. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.
Deeper into the Arsenale portion of the exhibition is an installation containing Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai Chiurai’s film We Live in Silence (Chapters 1-7) (2017). The film retells or frames the African present from a female perspective and examines the role of slavery, religion, and Apartheid in the various perspectives or faces of Africa.
The Biennale also includes national pavilions in which the work of one or several artists is presented and some ancillary exhibitions around the city. Africa was richly presented this year in each of these categories, and of the 86 national pavilions of the world, 14 are in Africa, and that is just over 12%. These include Benin, Cameroon, Congo (Peoples’ Republic of), Egypt, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Seychelles (Republic of), South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Many of these countries explored themes linked to nationhood and belonging, post-coloniality and created identities that easily lent themselves to the Foreigners Everywhere headline.
Pavilion of Ethiopia, ‘Prejudice and Belonging’. 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, ‘Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere’. Photo by: Andrea Avezzù . Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.
The Ethiopian pavilion presented work by a single artist, and though this was the first time that Ethiopia has been represented at the Biennale, the earthy colour palette and strong lines of Ethiopian artist Tesfaye Urgessa seem entirely at home in the 16th century Palazzo Bollani, with its pink-ish plaster coloured walls and stucco-edged ceilings as reflected in the artist’s intuitive, creative process. “Every empty canvas is a promise,” says Urgessa, reflecting on his process. “It is very hard sometimes when people ask what paintings are about. It is what paintings can do… the painting gives the answers as you are painting. Painting tells you where to go.. knowledge is intervening and you have to expand those thoughts as you paint.”
Tesfaye Urgessa, Love and curse, 2023. Oil on canvas, 249 x 248.5cm (Diptych). Courtesy of the artist and the Ethiopia Pavilion.
Based in Addis Ababa, the artist’s mask-like portraits and larger canvases of figures in domestic spaces have a layered, abstract composition that reflects those of the stately Palazzo. They bear poetic names such as In the Market of Life, Her Stories Will Unfold (2023), and Love and Curse (2023), “which are not afterthoughts but form part of the paintings and what they represent”, Urgessa insists. It is not a coincidence that the chosen curator for this pavilion is a poet, the celebrated poet and fellow Ethiopian Lemn Sissay. “Art is deeply rooted in Ethiopian culture,” acknowledges Sissay. And yet, both he and the artist have become part of the country’s diaspora. Urgessa studied at the Ale School of Art and Design at Addis Ababa University, then emigrated to Struttgart’s Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Kunsgte. This is where he experienced migration first-hand, reaffirming his cultural identity and bringing him into contact with the German Expressionist style’s distortion, vivid brush strokes and emotion. Urgessa’s paintings are figurative in that they are organised around human forms, focussing on their interactions, gestures and the spaces between them. His compositions are symbolically charged, and the artist’s practice is intuitive and self-aware. “It is the figure presented without any judgment,” Urgessa notes. “It is saying this is who I am, this is what I am.”
In the Arsenale, two halves of a hand-carved and painted boat, bound together with the remains of its sail, stand in the centre of artist Alioune Diagne’s exhibition, curated by art critic, historian and curator Massamba Mbaye. The fragility and futile nature of the bound wooden shape reflect the migrant crisis and notions of loss, isolation and separation.
Pavilion of Benin, ‘Everything Precious Is Fragile’. 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, ‘Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere’. Photo by: Andrea Avezzù . Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.
A few steps away, “E-Gue-le-de …Everything Precious is Fragile,” is the title of the Benin pavilion, curated by Azu Nwagbogu. The Benin Pavilion, a group exhibition, explores the balance between vulnerability and resilience. “The exhibition explicitly celebrates the resurgence of Indigenous wisdom,” notes Nwagbogu, “[this is] shedding light on the vital role of historically marginalised voices, especially women, in knowledge production.” This focus on the strength of Africa and African women is evident in most of the female artists in the group, Chloe Quenum, Moufouli Bello and Ishola Akpo and on female forms. It is impossible, nonetheless, to miss the work of the artist Romuald Hazoumè. Hazoumè’s enormous, circular or igloo-shaped shelter in the pavilion’s centre is a powerful commentary on the socio-political situation, poverty and culture of reuse in Benin, particularly in Porto Novo’s capital. The artist has made an art form from reusing the humble plastic jerry can used to smuggle petrol from Nigeria. His creation of an entire structure from the jerry cans, as well as humanised faces or masks, are powerful examples of the way Hazoumè sees the contemporary reframing of history and also the restoration of beauty to the polluted, urban environment that Porto Novo and Benin itself have become.
Finally, a highlight of the Venice Biennale 2024 this year was the Nigeria Pavilion. It is located in the Palazzo Canal residence, in the Dorsoduro district to the West of St Mark’s Square, and includes the “Nigeria Imaginary” exhibition. It covers three floors, featuring various works by homegrown and diaspora artists. According to its curator, the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) ‘s Aindrea Emelife, the exhibition’s concept brings together the real and the future, imaginary or hoped, the past and the present. It represents “a restless investigation of the past, of moments of optimism, as well as the Nigeria that lives in our minds: a Nigeria that could be and is yet to be.”
Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Celestial Gathering, 2024. Installation view, ‘Nigeria Imaginary’ at the Nigerian Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Photograph: Marco Cappelleti Studio. Courtesy of the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA).
There were so many terrific works in the exhibition, including Tunji Adeniyi-Jones’ Celestial Gathering, Onyeka Igwe’s film No Archive Can Restore this Chorus of (diasporic) Shame (2024), work by Toyin Ojih Odutola, Abraham Oghobase and Fatimah Tuggar. Like two parts of the same story, two works that particularly stood out for me and which represent the two balancing points of the exhibition are installations by Yinka Shonibare CBE RA Monument to the Restitution of the Mind and Soul (2023) and Precious Okoyomon’s Pre-Sky/Emit Light: Yes Like That (2024).
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, Monument to the Restititution of the Mind and Soul, 2023. Installation view, ‘Nigeria Imaginary’ at the Nigerian Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Photograph: Marco Cappelleti Studio. Courtesy of the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA).
Looking to the past, Shonibare’s Monument to the Restitutions of the Mind and Soul (2023) commemorates Benin’s punitive expedition of 1897 in which British forces under Sir Harry Rawson looted thousands of artefacts from the country, including the bronze plaques and sculptures. A sculpture bust depicting the head of Rawson is included in this installation and is covered in Shonibare’s characteristic ‘African’ cloth, reframing him into an African context. It has been placed on the floor, at the foot of a mountain of looted artefacts, replicated in terracotta for this installation. Many of the objects, soldiers, masks, animals and drums are recognisable as being now part of the collections of prominent British museums, including the ivory head of the Idia (Queen Mother), which is located in the British Museum today and which has become “a cultural emblem for modern Nigeria.”
Precious Okoyomon, Pre-Sky/Emit Light: Yes Like That, 2024. Installation view, ‘Nigeria Imaginary’ at the Nigerian Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Photograph: Marco Cappelleti Studio. Courtesy of the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA).
Okoyomon’s installation is a signalling to explore Nigeria’s contemporary moment, situated on the palace’s ground floor at the centre of a roofless and verdant flower bed. Okoyomon explained to me that a simple metal frame structure that holds a shiny silver ball is based on the concept of a memory archive. “I often work with time and space, but here it seems that all we have is memories and stories. This tower is about witnessing or connecting everyone’s collective dreams.” She decided to ask 40 strangers questions based on Lacanian philosophy – “So they were asked things like, How did you get there and how did you arrive? What are the consequences of your silence? Who caused the suffering of your mother? Have you prepared for your death? What do you love about the earth?” The interviews were collected into an audio soundtrack by experimental musician Gio Escobar, a collaborator of Okoyomon’s, which provides the sound element for the work.
Emelife’s considered curation of the pavilion and the conscious positioning of works in this stately, though slightly neglected, palace show modern Nigeria’s trajectory and aspiring energy.
Wael Shawky, Drama 1882, 2024. 4k video, sound, color, VFX, Arabic. ed. of 7 + 2 APs. Courtesy of the artist and the Pavilion of Egypt.
A pavilion not traditionally included in discussions about Africa and African national pavilions is the Egypt pavilion. This year, the artist Wael Shawky’s tremendous contribution to the African continent and its colonial past demands mentioning. Drama 1882, a musical filmed with over one hundred actors and installations by the artist, was only part of Shawky’s contribution to the pavilion, which he also curated and sought funding and sponsorship for. This was a massive physical undertaking and one that resonates with Egypt’s current socio-political state. The musical commemorated Egypt’s Urabi rebellion against the colonialist English army during the Anglo-Egypt war. It culminated in the 1882 battle of Tell-El-Kebir, in which the British defeated the Egyptian forces. A departure for Shawky, who has previously only made films using puppets and children since, he told me, these allowed greater control (by the artist). Drama 1882 was written, composed, and produced entirely in classical Arabic with strict choreography, a hand-painted set, and costumes that the artist personally designed. The idea, Shawky told me, is to give performers so much to think about that they cannot interpret or put themselves into the roles, which means that the artist is in control of the image and sound – and the effect is stunning!
Creativity is also limited regarding the content and artists a curator can present when putting together an exhibition for a pavilion. That is why two collateral events run by galleries that I found particularly exciting this year in Venice were 193 Gallery in Paris’s hosting of an exhibition for CCA Lagos, “Passengers in Transit,” and Pierro Atchugarry Gallery’s “Embodied Echoes: Stories of the Foreign Soul.”
Joana Choumali, It is time to be alive from the series ‘Albahian’, 2024. Hand embroidery on digital photography printed on canvas, 160 x 160cm. Courtesy of the artist and 193 Gallery.
The ‘Passengers in Transit’ exhibition focuses on the work of five Afro-descent female artists and includes a transitioning-to-female artist from Africa, the Caribbean and the diaspora. Many artists in the exhibition explore collage and digital media to significant effect. For example, Joana Choumali from Ivory Coast’s You Must Remember to Live (2023) is a horizontal triptych of a delicate dawn morning scene against a busy city backdrop. Choumali has used embroidery with digital photography on canvas to give depth to the heady glow of the morning sky. Another artist who includes embroidery, photography, and computer graphics is Thandiwe Muriu from Kenya. Her iconic female portraits are set in colourful frames that resemble postage stamps with sayings or phrases which become the work’s title. Images such as A Man’s actions are more important than his ancestry (2023), and Even the weak become strong when they are united (2024) are set under each image, like a piece of friendly or elders’ wisdom.
‘Embodied Echoes: Stories of the Foreign Soul’ at Pierro Atchugarry Gallery. Courtesy of Pierro Atchugarry Gallery.
The Pierro Atchugarry Gallery’s exhibition ‘Embodied Echoes: Stories of the Foreign Soul’, is a carefully selected and powerful exhibition of work by two artists living in exile. Cuban-born artist Dagoberto Rodríguez’s film and performance works comment on the politics and socio-economic difficulties of the current regime in Cuba (and echoed throughout the world.) Rodríguez’s film, Clessidra, depicts the hopes and realities of queues at refugee camps in a country that the artist does not make apparent. Filmed from above, it depicts people like formations of ants and then focuses on their expressions, faces and emotions. Similarly, Rodríguez’s performance piece is a prison guard who marches around the gallery, his steely stare moving from person to person with his hand resting on a baton. It is a chilling reminder of the everyday reality of refugees or displaced peoples in confinement.
‘Embodied Echoes: Stories of the Foreign Soul’ at Pierro Atchugarry Gallery. Courtesy of Pierro Atchugarry Gallery.
Moroccan artist Mounir Fatmi’s The Blinding Light, part of the artist’s series “The cult of manipulation: photography at the fringes of reality”, is a black and white photograph of a modern operating theatre where saintly figures from the early-Renaissance painter Fra Angelico’s religious painting the Healing of Deacon Justinian, have been superimposed onto the image, in the role of the surgeons. This is a modern allusion to the miraculous story in which the Deacon, Justinian, can walk after his leg was amputated. Because of saintly intervention while the deacon is asleep, the myth goes that the leg of a deceased Ethiopian man has replaced Justinian’s own, meaning that he can walk again, but with another man’s leg. Fatmi creates layers in this unlikely medieval story to great effect and raises questions of religion and science, race and redemption side by side.
A cursory glance at these images and the focus afforded by the many images to representations of African artists and modernities would suggest that this has been a great year for Africa at the Venice Biennale. Each national pavilion and its curation or selection of artists featured at this global event will only be improved and clarified with time. Pedrosa skewed this year’s biennial theme exclusively towards the Global South in terms of artistic focus.
There is much more that needs to be done in terms of practical administration, says Marta Foresti, the founder of Lago Collective, whom I spoke to about her visualisation, Foreigners Everywhere but not Welcome, that was widely shared online during the first weeks of the Biennale. The graphic relates countries’ GDP to the rejection rates of short-term visas needed for entry to attend European events such as the Biennale. “This is not just about artists, but also potential buyers/collectors from these countries, tourists who want to visit Venice and go to the Biennale, etc. So even when artists and artwork make it to the Biennale, the number of people who are able to visit/buy/be inspired is limited by visa regimes.”
More work needs to be done in terms of inclusivity and access. But as Venice Biennale’s selection committee looks to the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026, it is hoped that they will continue down the path that Pedrosa has cleared and use the global art event to focus on countries and on attitudes that need change in terms of perception and bureaucracy. This year’s United Nations figures set the current population of the African continent at almost 1,5 billion (1,489,733,794), which is nearly 18% of the world’s population. While the number of African pavilions in this year’s Biennale comes to just over 12%, it is hoped that the next iteration will represent the continent’s countries even more closely!
Dr. Sophie Kazan is an Honorary Fellow at Leicester University’s School of Museum Studies and a lecturer at the University of Falmouth. She holds degrees in Art & Archaeology from SOAS, University of London, a Master of Studies in Art History from the University of Oxford, and a doctorate from the University of Leicester. She joined the African State Architecture research group in 2022 and serves on the Higher Education Committee for the Association for Art History. Sophie organised the Global New Voices Conferences in 2022 and 2023. Her book, The Development of An Art History in the UAE: An Art Not Made To Be Understood, will be released in October 2024. She also hosts “Art Minute,” a 60-second art documentary on YouTube.
