PCAI COLLECTION ARTISTS

PCAI is happy to announce that PCAI collection artists Eva Koťátková and Rindon Johnson will be participating in this year’s Venice Biennale. The 60th International Art Exhibition, titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, will open to the public from Saturday, April 20 to Sunday, November 24, 2024, at the Giardini and the Arsenale; it will be curated by Adriano Pedrosa and organised by La Biennale di Venezia. The Exhibition will take place in the Central Pavilion (Giardini) and in the Arsenale, and it will present two sections: the Nucleo Contemporaneo and the Nucleo Storico.

As part of the International Art Exhibition Eva Koťátková will be presenting the installation The Heart of a Giraffe in Captivity is twelve kilos lighter, curated by Hana Janečková, at the Czech and Slovak Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale.
In 2013, Koťátková already presented her work in the Biennale’s main pavilion. This year, she is returning to Venice with a theme that explores Czechoslovak history from ecological and decolonial perspectives, through the story of a real giraffe named Lenka. Rindon Johnson’s work will be featured at the main venue of the exhibition, curated by Adriano Pedrosa.

Moreover, artist and filmmaker Sir John Akomfrah, who was recently supported by PCAI on the occasion of the 15th Sharjah Biennale, was commissioned by the British Council to represent Great Britain. John Akomfrah’s British Pavilion exhibition, titled Listening all Night to the Rain, explores urgent issues of contemporary life all around the world through the central theme of listening.

As a guiding principle, the Biennale Arte 2024 has favored artists who have never participated in the International Exhibition—though a number of them may have been featured in a National Pavilion, a Collateral Event, or in a past edition of the International Exhibition. Special attention is being given to outdoor projects, both in the Arsenale and in the Giardini, where a performance program is being planned with events during the pre-opening and closing weekend of the 60th Exhibition.

Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, the title of the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, is drawn from a series of works started in 2004 by the Paris-born and Palermo-based Claire Fontaine collective. The works consist of neon sculptures in different colours that render in a growing number of languages the words “Foreigners Everywhere”. The phrase comes, in turn, from the name of a Turin collective who fought racism and xenophobia in Italy in the early 2000s.

«The expression Stranieri Ovunque – explains Adriano Pedrosa – has several meanings. First of all, that wherever you go and wherever you are you will always encounter foreigners— they/we are everywhere. Secondly, that no matter where you find yourself, you are always truly, and deep down inside, a foreigner.»