Emma Mattei attends this year’s Venice Biennale titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere: a profound narrative on cultural exchange, environmental sustainability and the interwoven fabric of global identity.

There is a running joke about two adjacent placards placed outside bars across the Maltese islands, one says ‘No Foreigners’ the other ‘Tourists Welcome’. It’s an old joke but one that springs to mind when considering the title selected by Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa for the 60th International Art Exhibition taking place in Venice.

The Biennale Arte 2024 – the Biennale – opened to the public on April 20, and for the subsequent six months it will act as a beacon for approximately 800,000 visitors from across the globe, who will invade Venice, come hell or high water.

From the Nucleo Contemporaneo section, Giulia Andreani (Venice, Italy, 1985), Le Fanciulle Laboriose. Andreani focuses on the pictorial genre of history painting. Photo: Courtesy of the artist

These visitors – often referred to as ‘art lovers’: a glib term that tells us nothing about the demographic – will descend upon la Serenissima in droves to consume the cultural offerings spread across the floating city, fuelled by a combination of spritz, wilted cicchetti and, if they dare, nero di seppie con polenta.

As of April 25, the city has introduced a €5 fee for entering the historic centre on certain peak days (mostly weekends), to deter day trippers from invasion. Resident activist groups are up in arms, not because they will have to pay the entrance fee (they won’t) but because they think it absurd that any city should charge for being able to access it, turning it into a “theme park”.

Jambo Venice: A New Kind of Pavilion? is a project conceived as ongoing research to reflect upon notions of transnational relations and unveil new, unknown possibilities for action.

Long accused of Disneyfication, the city remains stubbornly Venetian, quite unlike Malta’s capital, Valletta, which has turned into a maelstrom of ‘live musical acts’, overpriced restaurants offering generic global cuisines on tables that are effectively occupying common space, with total disregard for neither the inhabitants nor the intrinsic character of the city.

In the three days leading up to the opening of the biennale to the public, invitees (and a few celebrities) traverse the lagoon, arriving in fabulous outfits and flat shoes, and most importantly in possession of that much-sought-after invitation to the preview days.

A fully charged mobile phone and trench coat are essential gear for all – critics, curators and collectors traipse around from one pavilion to another, before catching the traghetto, or water taxi if you’re in that strata, to a dinner or gathering, that may or may not be accessible, that you may or may not have been invited to.

From the Nucleo Contemporaneo section, detail from Habitacion Bayeux (Haitian Missionary on Horseback/Cocoa Mangrove), ca. 1957 by Philomé Obin.

In defence of the excesses of a biennale, there is the unanimous sentiment that at its core is the notion of challenging bigotry, prejudice and myopia through polyphony that rejects fixed, overriding narratives.

A source of inspiration, encounter and provocation

Many discussions emerged over these days in reaction to Pedrosa’s Nucleo Storico and Nucleo Contemporaneo which were composed of works considered “foreign, distant, outsider, queer and indigenous”, where seasoned curators commented on the quality of the works on display, while others lauded its celebration and shifts.

Whatever the reaction, there was no denying much discovery, perhaps causing savvy professionals and advisers to feel uneasy, excluded, how it might feel to be an outsider, proffering counter arguments such as – the artist is not the work.

From the Nucleo Contemporaneo section, Cloisonné de théâtre [theatre partition] (1941–1951) by Aloïse Corbaz, a multipanel epic depicting a series of fervent embraces set in florid surroundings, is structured into ‘acts’.

But there are many who feel that it is the artist’s position in society that determines the outcome of the work, and that they have an opportunity to use this to address the injustices (mostly of the West) and the plight (mostly of peoples who were colonised by the West) embedded in the histories of their native land.

While Pedrosa makes it very clear that he was not involved in the curation of the national pavilions, they are all nevertheless within a system (which Pedrosa seeks to break out of while being ensconced within it); across the global media critics pick out the pavilions and artists that they believe have managed to transcend these constraints and come up with works worthy of commentary and even praise, usually dosed out sparingly among the cognoscenti.

Generative study (I Will Follow the Ship), 2023 by Matthew Attard, who is representing Malta at the Biennale di Venezia art this year.

The tittle tattle across the campos, under the cover of night, after too many proseccos and insufficient snacks, was invariably about the politics and the parties – ‘Did you know Bjork is in town?’ ‘What did you think about the Israeli Pavilion not opening?’ ‘Would John Akomfrah’s work have been more effective and less overwrought without all those screens?’ ‘What haven’t we seen before?’ ‘Oh, have you been to see Pierre Huyghe yet, you must go!’ ‘Why is Pedrosa grouping together so-called outliers – especially those outside of any system?’ ‘Where’s the contemporary when so many of the artists in the Main Exhibition are deceased?’ Some even dared ask – ‘where is the art?’

Yet, however one wishes to unpack the political agendas and machinations of any biennale of this scale, it remains a source of inspiration, encounter and provocation – and especially for those with myopic vision one cannot but recall Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

The Israeli pavilion closed to the public until a ceasefire and hostage release agreement are reached, “but I think it’s important.”

I’d like to hope that every visitor to the biennale may have returned to their little corner a little ruffled, confused, elated and alive with the sounds and sights of the multitudinous voices that gathered in Venice, not just to talk and be seen, but also to listen and to discover the many ways of being and seeing.

The Venice Biennale is taking place until November 24.