Deep within the cavernous Arsenale di Venezia, amidst hundreds of works on view at the 60th edition of the Biennale, two paintings by Peruvian artist Violeta Quispe offer an invitation into a queer, gender-breaking multiverse. The works — El Matrimonio de la Chola (2022) and Apu Suyos (2024) — are a patchwork of nearly 100 characters pulled from Andean traditions of Quechua culture, recontextualized and filtered through a prism of sexual and gender equity. The inspiration for these colorful pieces comes from an adolescence spent navigating Lima’s deep conservatism.
This question of placement (or, more often, displacement) forms the core of Quispe’s work, but could also serve as a subheading for the exhibition’s central theme: “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere.” It’s a concept that the Biennale’s curator, Adriano Pedrosa, knows well. As the first Latin American and first openly queer person to lead the famed exhibition, foreignness and identity have been at the top of his mind. But so, too, has beauty. Specifically, as his curatorial statement explains: “A foreign, strange, uncanny, and queer sort of beauty.” Constructing an exhibition full of this exact kind of beauty was the only directive he’d received when former president Roberto Cicutto appointed him artistic director in late 2022. After exploring the exhibition over two balmy days in early June, it seems Pedrosa’s mission was accomplished, mostly. There is beauty, strangeness, uncanniness, and, yes, queerness to this year’s Biennale.
“Foreigners Everywhere” is a particularly salient topic for exploring queerness. History is overflowing with all manner of LGBTQ people from all corners of the world. As Pedrosa’s statement notes, the figure of the Queer Artist “who has moved within different sexualities and genders, often being persecuted or outlawed” is integral to his grand vision. Of the 331 participating artists and collectives, there are dozens for whom queerness permeates their practices. These artists are often presented in clusters. There is a large “queer room” (as one Biennale attendant referred to it) at the back of the Arsenale’s Corderie, which gathers works by artists from Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, and the USA. In the Central Pavilion, there are abstract works by queer artists from China, Italy, and the Philippines, while a small space near the entrance shows two congruous black-and-white photo series — Colombian artist Miguel Ángel Rojas’ El Emperador (1973–1980) and El Negro (1979) and Berlin-based artist Dean Sameshima’s being alone (2022) — staged next to a public restroom. While those works are a cheeky nod to both artists’ voyeuristic foci on cruising spaces, Sameshima’s paintings, Anonymous Homosexual in the Central Pavilion and Anonymous Faggot in the Arsenale’s Corderie, tap into broader themes of history and obfuscation in the Biennale’s queer offerings.
“The paintings are an homage to all the queers who are no longer with us and for those who can’t be out and fully themselves yet,” Sameshima told ARTnews.
Homage is also key to the work of Seoul-born, Los Angeles-based artist Kang Seung Lee, whose impressive Untitled (Constellation) stretches across the floor and up the walls a few rooms away in the Central Pavilion. A mix of drawing, embroidery, installation, and reappropriated organic materials and objects combine to pay homage to a generation of artists cut down by the AIDS crisis; forgotten figures such as Goh Choo San, Tseng Kwong Chi, Martin Wong, José Leonilson, and Joon-soo Oh are woven into her narrative.
“Histories are very often transnational,” Lee told ARTnews. “By talking about the legacy of these artists, who are from different continents, cities, and locations, I wanted [to] create a queer genealogy that has not been recognized enough by mainstream history.”
For Lee, this idea of “foreignness” became “an invitation to consider that we are all ‘visitors’ to this world and are here temporarily. In this way, it’s also about suggesting new possibilities to relate to one another and start a conversation.”
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