[Weekender] Traces of war, migration, otherness everywhere at Venice Biennale

VENICE, Italy -- Depending on where you live, you may or may not directly feel the effects of the world's wars in your daily life. But you will gain a stronger awareness of them walking around the Giardini in Venice, one of the main sites of the Venice Biennale, the world's oldest international art biennial.

Though the Venice Biennale attracts artists, curators and art aficionados every other year -- an architecture biennale is held on alternate years -- this year feels different, with the main thematic exhibition in the Giardini and Arsenale, and national pavilions across the city.

The Russian Pavilion was taken over by Bolivia this year amid Russia's war against Ukraine. It is the second consecutive biennale without Russia. In 2022, the curator and artists of the Russian Pavilion announced their decision to drop out of the art event to oppose Russia's invasion of Ukraine, leaving the pavilion empty.

Across from the Russian Pavilion is the Israeli Pavilion, which appears closed as if its curators and artists are protesting in silence against the ongoing Israel-Hamas War. The pavilion had planned to show the exhibition, “(M)otherland” with Ruth Patir, whose works would have questioned womanhood after being diagnosed with a gene mutation that puts her at high risk for breast and ovarian cancer.

However, leaving the pavilion closed, the sign on the window reads: “The artist and curators of the Israeli pavilion will open the exhibition when a cease-fire and hostage release agreement is reached.”

One of the most crowded pavilions on June 7 was that of Poland, where the artist collective Open Group was showing “Repeat After Me II,” a collective portrait of witnesses to the war in Ukraine. Civilian war refugees recalled the war through the sounds of weapons -- shots, missiles, sirens and explosions. The space has been converted into a karaoke bar where the audience can repeat the sounds, so that they, too, will experience some of the sounds of the war.

“We found each other and ran as far away from the theater as possible,” said a female refugee making the sound of an aerial bombing she recalled, in a video.

In the Austria Pavilion, works by Russian-born and Vienna-based conceptual artist Anna Jermolaewa, who practices a wide spectrum of media art, are presented. “Rehearsal for Swan Lake” is a video of ballerinas rehearsing. The video, made in collaboration with Ukrainian ballet choreographer Oksana Serheieva, is based on Jermolaewa’s memory from her teenage years, recalling how Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” was broadcast on Soviet state television in a loop for days during times of political unrest in the former USSR.

“In Soviet cultural memory, Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet became a code for a change in power. … Jermolaewa and Serheieva turn the ballet from a tool of censorship and distraction into a form of political protest -- here, the dancers rehearse for regime change in Russia,” the description of the work reads.

The Australia Pavilion – winner of this year's Golden Lion for the Best National Pavilion – amazes visitors with work by Indigenous artist Archie Moore. The sprawling chalk-on-blackboard mural traces the artist’s Kamilaroi and Bigambol ancestry, spanning 65,000 years and stretching back more than 2,400 generations.

Moore's work “Kith and Kin” pushes viewers to think about massacres and invasions and how we as humans might embrace and understand others. At the center, surrounded by water, are archival records referencing "kin" to demonstrate how colonial laws and government policies in Australia have long been imposed upon First Nations peoples.

After checking out the national pavilions in the Giardini, head to the main exhibition of the biennale, “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere” in the Giardini and Arsenale. The main exhibition is curated by Adriano Pedrosa, who is the first openly queer and first non-European or North American curator in the biennale's history.

Pedrosa said the overarching theme and title of the biennale, “Foreigners Everywhere,” was drawn from a series of works by Paris-born collective Claire Fontaine since 2004.

“The backdrop of the work is a world rife with multifarious crises concerning the movement and existence of people across countries, nations, territories and borders,” the curator said, on the theme of the biennale.

Upon entering the exhibition, “Foreigners Everywhere,” a suspended neon sculpture by Claire Fontaine welcomes visitors, giving them a chance to consider the meaning of otherness and how anyone can be a foreigner depending on the situation they face, whether due to war, their identity, their commitments or beliefs.

More than 330 artists from some 90 countries are participating in the 60th Venice Biennale, which opened on April 20 and runs through Nov. 24 in Venice.