Here you can find out more about the other events and exhibitions in Venice – from UK-based artists, curators and organisations – beyond the British Pavilion.
In Praise of Black Errantry
Unit presents In Praise of Black Errantry, a group exhibition celebrating the radical Black imagination. Curated by Indie A. Choudhury (The Courtauld Institute of Art), the exhibition brings together works by 19 modern and contemporary Afro-diasporic artists. In Praise of Black Errantry is inspired by the writer Édouard Glissant (1928–2011), who proposed errantry as a form of freedom and resistance, evoking a spiritual wandering beyond national borders or limits of exile. Artists in this exhibition take up errantry as a radical strategy that defies boundaries, advocating spontaneity and experimentation beyond cultural fixity or political containment.
17 April – 29 June 2024
Osman Yousefzada WELCOME! A PALAZZO FOR IMMIGRANTS
Fondazione Berengo presents Welcome! A Palazzo for Immigrants, a site-specific solo exhibition by inter-disciplinary artist Osman Yousefzada in partnership with the Victoria & Albert Museum. Curated by Nadja Romain and Amin Jaffer, the intervention at the Palazzo Franchetti is a continuation of a body of work that explores themes of unity, movement and migration in modern society. The exhibition, running from 17 April to 7 October 2024, is in conjunction with the 60th edition of La Biennale di Venezia and responds to its central language of exclusion and immigrant displacement.
Net Making
Net Making is a group exhibition curated by Viktoria Bavykina and Max Gorbatskyi, which draws from the practice of collective weaving of camouflage nets as a metaphor for joint horizontal actions. The exhibition will feature works by Katya Buchatska, Andrii Dostliev and Lia Dostlieva, Daniil Revkovskyi and Andrii Rachynskyi and Oleksandr Burlaka, as well as the communities with whom the artists have worked together.
The Biennale Arte 2024 theme, Stranieri Ovunque—Foreigners Everywhere, touches upon universal issues of otherness and the coexistence of diversity. In line with the exhibition's general theme, the Ukrainian Pavilion project will address the topic of otherness through personal experiences of war, emigration and assimilation in new societies and the transformation of language under the pressure of violence.
This project was supported with a Biennials Connect Grant from us at the British Council.
20 April – 24 November
'A WORLD OF MANY WORLDS', A One-Day Assembly on Global Asias
Asia Forum and Asymmetry Art Foundation are pleased to present a one-day assembly titled A World of Many Worlds at the historic Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Taking place on Saturday, 20 April 2024, as part of the official Collateral Events of the Biennale Arte 2024, this programme is realised with the support of Asymmetry Art Foundation and Bagri Foundation. Through an engaging programme of presentations, panel conversations, screenings, and performances, A World of Many Worlds seeks to bring together artists, curators, thinkers and arts practitioners to expound on the pluriversal possibilities of global Asias.
Pavilion of Finland: The pleasures we choose
The pleasures we choose is a multifaceted collaboration by artists Pia Lindman, Vidha Saumya, Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen, curators Yvonne Billimore and Jussi Koitela, and architectural designer Kaisa Sööt. Commissioned and produced by Frame Contemporary Art Finland, it premieres at the Pavilion of Finland at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Blurring the boundaries between art, architecture and social commentary, the Pavilion of Finland brings together three artists for whom art, life, and activism are intertwined. Lindman, Saumya and Wallinheimo-Heimonen’s practices are acutely informed by their embodied experiences of structural, environmental and social imbalances. Articulated through a wide range of materials and processes – including drawing, needlework, sculpture and healing – their works celebrate the pleasure of the personal as a powerful means of reimagining the world as we know it.
20 April – 24 November
Crip Arte Spazio: Shape presents the DAM in Venice
Crip Arte Spazio is a huge, joyous, and exuberant celebration showcasing the dynamism, wit and grandeur of the Disability Arts Movement (DAM). The DAM aligned art with the fight for rights, broke barriers and ultimately affected changes in UK law, while making great art about doing so.
As if an electric demonstration of crip creatives have arrived in Venice, the exhibition explodes in the venue, with huge protest banners, cartoon panels, large-scale projected artist films, photography, graphic novels and campaign merchandise.
16 April – 31 December
Tesfaye Urgessa – Prejudice and Belonging, curated by Lemn Sissay
Tesfaye Urgessa represents Ethiopia for the debut of the Ethiopian Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale, curated by Lemn Sissay. Urgessa’s work is deeply rooted in Ethiopian religious iconography and traditional figurative painting, unraveling the complex tapestry of human emotions within the intimate confines of domestic life.
These works present figures grappling with the raw duality of vulnerability and strength. Rejecting the notion of victimhood, he renders his subjects fearless, depicting on a large scale, writhing bodies that point to the intersection between race and ritual.
The exhibition titled Prejudice and Belonging for the first Ethiopia Pavilion encompasses the experience of the thirteen years spent in Germany studying and painting. 'People tend to think I am painting victims in my canvases but it’s completely different. The figures hold all kinds of emotions, fragility as well as confidence. It is the figure presented without any judgment. It is saying this is who I am, this is what I am.'
Against the backdrop of this year's Biennale theme, 'Foreigners, Everywhere,' Urgessa's exploration of identity, becomes ever more poignant.
20 April – 24 November
Nigeria Imaginary
How do you imagine a nation? Can we create a contemporary parable? Nigeria Imaginary – curated by Aindrea Emelife and featuring Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Ndidi Dike, Onyeka Igwe, Toyin Ojih-Odutola, Abraham Oghobase, Precious Okoyomon, Yinka Shonibare CBE RA and Fatimah Tuggar – explores the paths not taken and investigates the Nigeria of the mind in order to imagine a new nation and create a manifesto for the future.
20 April – 24 November
Town Island
The Tetley is working with artist Benaiah Matheson on Town Island, a new project inspired by migration and belonging to be presented at the Grenada Pavilion as part of the Venice Biennale 2024. The work exhibited at the Biennale includes two pieces subtitled Movements, that respond to hundreds of flags produced by participants in workshops in Carriacou and Huddersfield. A very small island off the coast of Grenada, Carriacou has had a significant impact on the northern English town of Huddersfield where a large proportion of the Black community have Carriacou heritage. Through this presentation Matheson explores the resonances and distinctions between Carriacou and Huddersfield, the impact of migration on individual and collective senses of belonging. Town Island is at the Grenada Pavilion.
This project was supported with a Biennials Connect Grant from us at the British Council.
20 April – 24 November
A wà ńbè: a celebration of community and culture
British Nigeria artist Orry Shenjobi (b. 1997) presents A wà ńbẹ̀ (pronounced oh-waam-beh), documenting Owambe parties' party and its enduring cultural significance. Shenjobi invites foreigners everywhere at the Biennale and beyond to experience Owambe as a bridge transcending time, space, and existence. Curated by Usen Esiet, the exhibit explores the joy of life through diverse backgrounds and tribes' celebration.
20 April – 24 October (closed Tuesdays)
Janus *pause* leaking fortified enclaves (2020) and The Door of the Woman is the glass slipper (Atlas, in transit laid to rest) (2022)
The Kitchen, New York City’s center for experimental art and the avant-garde, partners with Berggruen Arts & Culture to present two works from artist, writer and poet, Rhea Dillon (b.1996) that act as sculptural interventions at Palazzo Diedo. In Janus *pause* leaking fortified enclaves (2020), a sapele mahogany cross will slowly drip water onto the floor of Palazzo Diedo throughout the duration of the exhibition. The second work installed in the space is The Door of the Woman is the glass slipper (Atlas, in transit laid to rest), a 2022 sculpture that engages with the history of assemblage.
20 April – 24 November
NUMBER 207
MUNTREF, Buenos Aires presents the solo exhibition NUMBER 207 by Iranian-born British artist Reza Aramesh at Chiesa di San Fantin, with support from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Curated by New York based Serubiri Moses, Aramesh’s exhibition exposes the use of power and brutality in a crucial reckoning with European art history and the human condition.
NUMBER 207 presents three groups of ongoing sculptural series created specifically in conversation with the architectural setting of Chiesa di San Fantin. Each work references archival, war reportage imagery from the mid-20th century to the present, with the exhibition’s curation and installation responding to the history of the site itself as the home of the Order of San Fantin, a post mediaeval ecclesiastical order that housed and ministered to the condemned as they awaited execution. In NUMBER 207, the building’s historical context of punishment and reformation meets Aramesh’s imagery of present-day captives and their torture in a compelling appeal to humanity and its precarious balance between empathy and cruelty.
16 April – 2 October 2024