Latin American art at the Venice Biennale 2024

The Venice Art Biennale, which can be visited until November 24, will have a significant Latin American presence of 114 artists who represent more than a third of the participants in the 60th edition of this significant event.

Under the title “Foreigners everywhere” the biennial will bring together artists from Latin America and the Caribbean, which on this occasion is curated for the first time by a representative from South America, the Brazilian Adriano Pedrosa. Born in 1965, Pedrosa directs the renowned MASP (Museum of Art of São Paulo) and is the first Latin American invited to the Biennial. For the curator, the title has several meanings. “First of all, wherever you go and wherever you are, always you will find foreigners (…) and, secondly, that no matter where you are, you are always truly a foreigner,” Pedrosa explained in a statement.

Adriano Pedrosa, curator of the Venice Art Biennale Photography: @la_Biennale
The presence of indigenous art will play an important role in this exhibition with a monumental mural by the Makhu Collective of Brazil, which will welcome visitors on the main façade of the Central Pavilion. Divided into two sections, “Contemporary Core” and “Historical Core”, contemporary art, works from the 20th century and a series of pieces from the Claire Fontaine group will converge, with neon sculptures of different colors that translate the phrase “Foreigners in everywhere".
Below is a selection of Latin American artists invited to the biennial:

Iván Argote (Bogotá, Colombia, 1983)

Iván Argote.
Iván Argote's work stands out for exploring the relationship between history, politics and the construction of our own subjectivities from critical and “anti-institutional” reflections through pieces whose presence impacts the viewer. His videos, sculptures, collages, and installations in public spaces raise questions about how we relate to others, to the State, and to traditions.

Gentlemen, 2023. MAMU. Photography: Úrsula Ochoa.

Abel Rodríguez (Canuinarí, Putumayo, 1941).

Abel Rodríguez for the documentary “Abel Rodríguez in Naming the Unnameable: Conversations about Art and Truth”, created by the Truth Commission.
Abel Rodríguez is part of the Nonuya people who inhabit Amazonian territories. He is an empirical artist whose work explores natural beauty by creating paintings that show the splendid wonders of the Amazon rainforests, their plants and their biodiversity.

Abel Rodríguez, Monte Firm, 2020. Photography: Vision Institute.

Miguel Ángel Rojas (Bogotá, Colombia, 1946)

Miguel Ángel Rojas. Photography: Riegner Houses.
Miguel Ángel Rojas has established himself as one of the pioneers of conceptualism in Colombia and one of the first artists to break social taboos through works that range from drawing, sculptures, to installations where he reflects on complex issues related to sexuality, marginal culture, violence and problems related to drug consumption and production.

El Nuevo Dorado 2019 (Shanghai Biennale). Coca Mambe silkscreen and gold leaf.

Daniel Otero Torres (Bogotá, Colombia, 1985)

Gabriel Otero Torres. Photography: Drawing Lab Paris.
Daniel Otero Torres stands out for creating works that move on the border of drawing and sculpture until reaching installation. His drawings marked by a photorealistic line applied to monumental structures, create a dislocation of materials and contexts.

Manifesto of fragility, XVI Lyon Biennial. Photography: mor charpentier.

Embroiderers from Isla Negra (Chile, 1967-1980)

Isla Negra embroidery machines. Collective Embroidery 1972.
The Isla Negra Embroiderers are a collective of embroiderers conceived by Leonor Sobrino who carried out several social initiatives with children and mothers who were heads of families during the years from 1960 to 1968. From 1967 the collective was founded and under her mentorship and guidance, these Women began embroidering vivid scenes on flour bags using brightly colored needles and wool, creating authentic, warm, and spontaneous images of their own world.

View of the exhibition, “Bordering the overflow. The embroiderers of Isla Negra in the MNBA 1969-2019.”

Sol Calero (Caracas, Venezuela, 1982)

Portrait of Sol Calero during installation at Studio Voltaire by Damian Griffiths for Artsy.
Sol Calero creates site-specific installations that function as meeting spaces. He uses three-dimensional pieces and has staged situations ranging from a school to a spa or a currency exchange office. Calero's works are vibrant, bright and fun, while examining the political nuances of topics such as cultural representation, national identity, exoticism and marginalization.

The Bus, 2019, Finnish National Gallery. Photography: Petri Virtanen.

River Claure (Cochabamba, Bolivia, 1997)

River Claure. Photography: National Geographic.
River Claure is a photographer and artist considered one of the most important emerging artists in Bolivia. His work explores and questions the notion of identity as something essential and stagnant; Furthermore, he addresses the landscape as an element of identification and how its destruction conditions community identities.

Villa Adela. From the Warawar Wawa series, 1029-2020.

Beatriz Cortez (San Salvador, El Salvador, 1970)

Beatriz Cortez in the Smithsonian Arts + Industries building, with her work “Chultún El Semillero” Photography: Greg Kahn.
Beatriz Cortez is a sculptor who fuses in her work simultaneity, life in different temporalities and different versions of modernity, particularly in relation to memory and loss after a war and the experience of migrating, in relation to imagining possible futures.

“Memory Insertion Capsule”. Photos by Nikolay Maslov.

La Chola Poblete (Mendoza, Argentina, 1989)

La Chola Poblete.
La Chola Poblete makes watercolor paintings, oil landscapes, bread sculptures and iron structures that build a body of work in the key of denunciation and vindication, where the dynamics of the cult are put up for debate. Using tools and formats around which she creates her own iconography, she intervenes in historical and contemporary imaginaries to explore the ambiguities of the story of the past and current political discourse.

Guaymallén, Palais Populaire, Berlin, 2023.
Paula Nicho Cumez (Comalapa, Guatemala, 1955)

Paula Nicho Cumez.
Paula Nicho is Known for creating a community of Mayan Tz'uthile women artists called Kaqchikel Surrealist Painters. In her work you can see surreal worlds in which she addresses nature, the Kakchiquel Mayan worldview and the power of women. Likewise, her work has been described as a reflection of naive art (native art).

“Our Mother Nature” (2012). Photography: Paula Nicho.
Bárbara Sánchez-Kane (Mérida, Mexico, 1987)

Barbara Sanchez-Kane.

Bárbara Sánchez-Kane is an artist and designer in whose work she reveals the intersection between fashion and art, focusing on how clothing shapes our identity and self-expression. Sánchez-Kane, who goes by she and he, deconstructs and reimagines traditional identities through her clothing and sculptures.

“New lexicons for the incarnation.” View of the exhibition at the Kurimanzutto gallery in NY.

Ana Segovia (Mexico, D.F., 1991)

Ana Segovia for BAZAAR. Photography: Fer Piña.
Ana Segovia explores, through her work, masculinity and its stereotypes, as a result of sociocultural identity constructions. Her work shows influences from painters such as David Hockney, Dana Schutz and Francis Bacon, while she makes references from literature and film.

To some dead painters, 2016. Photography: Karen Huber Gallery.