by Camille Moreno
I recently interviewed an emerging performance artist based in London. Over an exorbitantly priced cup of Gail’s coffee and a pastry, the conversation – which centred around career development – landed on Venice.
“It says something if you’re there,” the artist explained, lamenting not being able to go.
Every spring, Venice becomes flooded with more than just water. Foreigners flock to the opening of the Biennale (art or architecture, it’s all the same) as Venetians brace themselves for tourist season. As news outlets become inundated with updates, so does social media feed as the Gram alights with conspicuous cultural consumption in the form of posts, stories, and the like. Tell me you’re at the Biennale without telling me you’re at the Biennale.
This year’s edition, titled Foreigners Everywhere, embarks on a journey that seeks to foreground “overlooked geographies” and artists who have not previously participated. Rather than asking whether the 60th Venice Biennale achieves its ambitious and perhaps conscripted goal of dismantling colonialism, I have a more pressing concern: does nationalising the notion of a foreigner just relocate the practice of exclusion, as opposed to dismantling it?
Considering the physical inaccessibility of the city built on water, the lagoon, and its costly and complicated passage, it’s hard to see past the excessively exclusionary circumstances of this grand exhibition before even breaching the problems of the pavilion format. The Venice Biennale and its precarious surroundings preclude most of the world, including the Venetians.
Seventy percent of Venice’s population lives in greater Venice – as in not on the lagoon – where nary an art enthusiast shall venture. At the height of season, tourists on the islands outnumber locals 2:1. The twenty per cent of residents who do live on the lagoon work in the tourism industry. What this means is that Venice’s OG art scene has been long since diluted by tourism.
The accuracy of Foreigners Everywhere is that there are, in fact, foreigners everywhere. But what kind of foreigners are they? It seems that the kind of foreigner with the means to attend the big Biennale bash is international, yes, but certainly not an alien, a newcomer, or a refugee.
Is hosting such a superlative event, contained by its guest list and by those who can afford to be there or not, not just displacing the exclusionary practice from one arbitrary place to another, and therein creating a new kind of foreigner: the art world foreigner?
According to my interviewee, anyone worth their weight in tote bags will be at the opening of the Biennale. It is the litmus test of artistic relevance, as dictated by a Eurocentric commission. Meanwhile, of the 150 non-European countries in the world, citizens from 104 of them would require a visa just to set foot in Venice.
“It really felt like [I was] missing out on something.” I ask whether it still holds value to visit later, seeing as the exhibition lasts well into the autumn. However, it seems the value of the Venice Biennale lies less in seeing it than it does in timing your attendance with that of the insiders. Value instantly decreases once the event has officially opened to the public. In this way, the notion of the foreigner can be considered less as a civic status and instead as a practice of othering.
“There’s this desire to go and be there at the same time as everybody else and it’s hard to fight. It looks better. In the art world it’s just really important if you appear to be somewhere at the right time. It’s like: you’re valuable. It just gives you points. As fickle as it sounds, that’s just the way it is.”
“Does it give your artwork points too?” I ask.
“Yeah, it does, and that’s what I am noticing a lot.”
At the end of the day, generalised nepotism is neither a new revelation, nor is it unique to the art world. Perceived societal value over unbiased evaluation of quality is a humanitarian issue, not a sectoral one. What is notable, however, is a degree of irony to have a historically nationalistic event place so much prominence around the concept of a foreigner without reevaluating its own problematic format and intrinsically segregated configuration.
This was most apparent in the absence of recognition by the Biennale’s organisers of the Palestinian elephant in the room. While there were protests during the opening, and the Israeli pavilion was closed on its own volition, the official website bears absolutely no reference to the current population of millions who find themselves foreigners in their own land as they are slowly but surely ejected from it.
To stage an exhibition investigating the foreign experience against the backdrop of colonial structures during the most active displacement of a population since the creation of the Biennale itself, but not actively address it, is remarkable.
Flocking to Venice to glorify outsiders is a new form of poverty porn: it’s foreigner porn. Where are the outsiders? Wherever they are, they are not in Venice.
The Venice Biennale runs through 24 November, 2024
Giardini at C. Giazzo, & Arsenale at Calle Larga Rosa
30122, Venezia
more information here
