Every other year, the Venice Biennale welcomes the who’s who of the art world. For the 2024 edition 86 countries are participating, each with their national pavilions in the so-called Olympics of art from April 20 to November 24. Most are in the Giardini, the exhibition’s historic home in a park at the mouth of the Grand Canal; others are at the Arsenale, the repurposed shipyard to which Biennale expanded in 1999, or at multiple off-site locations scattered around town. Here are some highlights.
In the Giardini
Stacks of redacted government documents relating to the deaths of Indigenous Australians in police custody, part of the installation, Kith and Kin, by Archie Moore.MATTEO DE MAYDA/The New York Times News Service
Australia: Aboriginal artist Archie Moore won the Golden Lion at this year’s Biennale for Kith and Kin, his breathtaking installation on the Australian pavilion’s high walls. There, he has chalked up a real and speculative family tree going back 65,000 years, the time humans have continuously inhabited what is now Australia. On the floor, there is a grid created by stacks of government documents, mainly inquest records, marking the deaths in detention of the continent’s original people.
British artist John Akomfrah poses in front of the British pavilion at the 60th Biennale of Arts exhibition, in Venice, Italy, on April 16.Luca Bruno/The Associated Press
U.K.: John Akomfrah’s Listening All Night to the Rain in the British pavilion is the most significant and impressive video work at the Biennale. In an immersive symphony of sound and imagery divided into eight cantos, Akomfrah reflects on British politics and colonialism through the experiences of migrant communities. Dotted across multiple screens, the cantos include historic news footage, images of Scottish and Yorkshire landscapes and passages where found objects including old photos are shot through gently streaming water.
Japan Yuko Mohri constructs wry and precarious assemblages from living and industrial materials in the Japanese pavilion of the 2024 Venice Biennale.CASEY KELBAUGH/The New York Times News Service
Japan: Inspired by jerry-rigged drip-catching buckets in the Tokyo subway, Yuko Mohri’s has created a Rube Goldberg machine that makes sounds as water circulates through various plastic tubes, glass vessels and suspended drop sheets. In a second piece for an exhibition entitled Compose, rotting fruit emits electrical current, which is then used to create sound.
Kapwani Kiwanga covered the Venice Biennale Canada Pavilion with millions of beads for her exhibit, Trinket.National Gallery Of Canada
Canada: Artist Kapwani Kiwanga has covered the Canada Pavilion with millions of glass beads, inside and out, in Trinket, a piece that refers to the historic Venetian trade that saw Europeans exchange beads for copper, palm oil and even enslaved people. The work, however, is not a denunciation of colonialism as it drapes the brick facade and covers the interior walls with long strands of breads: rather it considers how different value systems are created.
At the Arsenale
A visitor sits in front of one installation in the exhibition To Hear by artist Massimo Bartolini.Luca Bruno/The Associated Press
Italy: In a show entitled To Hear, Massimo Bartolini has created a labyrinth of metal scaffolding with several large sound machines at its core in a piece that is both immersive and contemplative, requesting the visitor slow down and listen.
A visitor looks the installation I Will Follow the Ship, by artist Matthew Attard.Luca Bruno/The Associated Press
Malta: In a low-tech year, Matthew Attard’s I Will Follow the Ship stands out for its sensitive use of digital imaging. The artist traces historic images of sailing ships with an eye-tracker to plot a connect-the-dots reproduction of the original, before letting them sail on watery backdrops.
Off-site
Hong Kong: Water is a recurring motif this year, intriguingly deployed at Hong Kong’s collateral event, Courtyard of Attachments, just outside the entrance to the Arsenale. Inspired by pet shops and his father’s seafood restaurant, Trevor Yeung reflects on our relationship with controlled and natural ecosystems as he directs the viewer through a narrow passageway between stacks of empty aquariums where the only inhabitants are bubblers and decorative gravel.
Croatia: Hidden away in Cannaregio, far removed from the glamour of the Giardini or the tourist sites of San Marco, Croatian artist Vlatka Horvat takes a different approach to this year’s theme of Foreigners Everywhere in a group show entitled By the Means at Hand: Rethinking 1970s mail art projects, she has invited migrant and diaspora artists from multiple countries to deliver to her – by safe hand, not digitally – small works of art. Thanks to friends, travellers and other impromptu couriers, a vast collection of works on paper, witty and poignant, is accumulating in the Croatian pavilion
Kate Taylor