Okwui Enwezor's 56th Venice Biennale Critiqued for Radical Geopolitical Shift

Curator Solange Farkas praises the 56th Venice Biennale, "All the World's Futures," directed by Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor, as a historic and courageous edition. Farkas notes the significant overlap between Enwezor's selected artists and her own two-decade research at Associação Cultural Videobrasil, which focuses on art from outside the traditional US-Europe axis, including South America, the Middle East, and Africa. She argues the world urgently needs this geopolitical repositioning and that Enwezor was brave to enact it at the traditional Venice Biennale. The 19th edition of the Videobrasil Festival, opening October 5, features artists also in the Biennale: Brazilian Sonia Gomes and Swedish-born, São Paulo-based Runo Lagomarsino, who presents the same work shown in Venice. Farkas defends the Biennale against negative reception, attributing it to prejudice and a lack of repertoire. She highlights Enwezor's inclusion of lesser-known artists from Africa and the Middle East, the use of Karl Marx's "Capital" as a thematic thread, and specific works by Steve McQueen, the Invisible Borders collective, and Abounaddara. The Biennale's connection to the previous São Paulo Biennale and its radical transformation of the Central Pavilion and Arsenale are also noted.