‘I’m not using the word ‘representing’ as I can’t represent Australia,” says the softly spoken Indigenous artist Archie Moore, recovering after the packed opening of the Australia pavilion at the Venice Biennale. “I can’t even represent all the Aboriginal people – because we’re not a homogenous group. So I choose to just say I’m presenting an exhibition for the Australia pavilion.”
Although First Nations artists have been to Venice before, with the Nordic pavilion hosting Sámi artists in 2022, this time they seem to have broken through en masse at the biennale. The main exhibition, called Foreigners Everywhere, is packed with their work, sourced from all over the world by the Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa. The idea is that being colonised makes you feel like a foreigner in your own country, with the erasure of your culture, the robbery of your land, and at worst the extermination of your people.
