The Venice Art Biennale 2024 is soon to close its doors, but there's still time to catch the highlghts. The central exhibition at this edition is called ‘Foreigners Everywhere’, a theme that is intended to unify what is essentially a national competition and to highlight indigenous artists whose presence, until recently, has been lacking on the international stage. At the Luxembourg Pavilion, artist collective Every Island, curated by Joel Valabrega, embraced this theme in their exhibition, ‘A Comparative Dialogue Act’ as they set up a stage that could be used by a roster of artists throughout the six months the biennale is open.
Brussels-based Every Island, founded in 2021, comprises Alessandro Cugola, Caterina Malavolti, Damir Draganic, Juliane Seehawer and Martina Genovesi. Here, they collaborated with artist and multidisciplinary artist Andrea Mancini to create a framework for performance artists to use during the exhibition.
‘I think what we were interested in was making the exhibition space a productive space; we reflected collectively and started to think of the biennale in a different way, more as a testing ground than as a framework to show a finished product,’ said Cugola ahead of the opening.
The silver-lined space comprises a metal-tiled stage surrounded by a padded curtain set with large, elaborate speakers on wheels which, when moved, carve their path into the surface of the stage. The retro-futuristic lab aesthetic sets the stage for a progressive presentation that counters traditional artistic and curatorial approaches to the biennale.
The intention is that international artists take on the space, adding to a sound library for the next artist to use, if they choose to do so, creating the dialogue referenced in the show’s title.
The first performance, by Turkish Selin Davasse, encompassed a series of satirical monologues, taking on the identities of different animals we tend to see as pests. ‘Davasse works a lot with irony and produces spoken-word performances, and she uses different animals as metaphors for human dynamics, mostly linked to exclusion and a lack of acceptance,’ explained Genovesi. ‘Usually the animals that she picks are the ones that we do not love or do not feel closeness with, like pigeons, silkworms, mice, and she sort of impersonates these animals in a very seductive and ironic way; there are many layers that you can read into [the work]. Her work is usually very linked to feminism, but also to political conditions around the world.’
Samples from Davasse’s performance, supported musically by Mancini, were made available for the next artist, Célin Jiang, who was followed by Stina Fors. This approach is intended to question the model of national pavilions, proposing an ethos of sharing platforms and resources between different parts of the world.
‘We decided to work with sound because it's the best way to open a dialogue,’ Mancini explained. ‘It's also a way to share knowledge and that's why we also use the medium. There will be different phases, most of them are pretty chaotic, made using a patching technique, layering over layer by layer. There is chaos all the time but we try to have moments of chirality and clarity – so there’s always one of the two happening.’
Mixing technologies, the collective offers a work that is intentionally unresolved, a work in progress with a definite end but many possibilities en route. One wonders what this work will be when it comes to an end later in November, but not even the artists know, and there is something wonderfully liberating about that.
The 60th Venice Biennale runs throughout the city until 24 November 2024
