Biennale Arte 2024: A Show of Biographies and Plural Ontologies

The 60th Venice Biennale, titled 'Stranieri Ovunque' (Foreigners Everywhere) and curated by Adriano Pedrosa, is interpreted by philosopher Nicola Davide Angerame as a manifestation of Gianni Vattimo's 'weak thought' applied to art. Vattimo, who passed away in 2023, argued for a plural, non-dogmatic truth that listens to marginalized voices. Angerame contends that the Biennale embodies this by presenting works from the Global South, diaspora artists, and non-academic traditions, challenging Western aesthetic norms. Pedrosa's exhibition at the Central Pavilion and Arsenale includes modernist works from the South, Italian diaspora artists of the 20th century displayed on Lina Bo Bardi's Glass Easels, and a vast array of paintings and textiles from non-canonical sources. The show functions as an anthropological museum, but its core lies in individual works that reveal diverse concepts of beauty. Pedrosa describes the offered beauty as 'foreign, strange, unsettling, and queer.' The Biennale invites viewers to reconfigure their ideals and listen to the 'weak' voices of indigenous and traditional cultures, whose ontologies—populated by spirits and ancestors—mirror those of ancient civilizations. Angerame concludes that the exhibition succeeds if it allows contact with a plurality of ontologies, teaching true listening to the alien whisper.