Venice Biennale 2024 Giardini Pavilions: Denmark, Spain, Bulgaria and Poland Present Provocative Works

At the 2024 Venice Biennale, four national pavilions in the Giardini present compelling installations. Inuuteq Storch represents Denmark with a photographic exploration of Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), combining contemporary images with archival work from John Møller (1867–1935) in pieces like 'Necromancer', 'Soon Summer Will Be Over', and 'Keepers Of The Ocean'. Sandra Gamarra Heshiki, the first immigrant selected for Spain, fills her pavilion with hundreds of items addressing colonial violence and silenced narratives through sections such as 'Virgin Land', 'Cabinet of Extinction', and 'Migrant Garden', featuring texts by thinkers like Rita Segato and Silvia Federici. Bulgaria's pavilion features 'The Neighbours' by Krasimira Butseva, Lilia Topouzova and Julian Chehirian, presenting audio testimonies from former prisoners of Soviet-era labor camps within recreated living rooms. The Poland Pavilion hosts Open Group's 'Repeat After Me II', a two-part video installation from 2022 and 2024 where Ukrainian refugees describe wartime sounds, followed by silence that challenges the audience to vocalize the imitations themselves. The projects engage themes of decolonization, historical memory, migration, and the sensory experience of conflict.