Some of the strongest queer art on view in Foreigners Everywhere is easy to miss, tucked away in a series of low-slung crumbly outbuildings in the Giardino delle Virgini (just beside the eastern entrance to the Arsenale grounds). The Seoul-born, Los Angeles-based Kang Seung-Lee’s 2023 video “Lazarus” is a tribute to Singaporean-born, globally prolific choreographer Goh Choo San and the Brazilian conceptual artist José Leonilson, both of whom died of AIDS at the height of the epidemic.
By combining elements of both artists’ work with details of his own (recreating, for example, one of Leonilson’s soft sculptures in fabrics typical of Korean funerary rites and incorporating it into the dance as a point of tension) Seung-Lee has created a tear-jerking piece about intimacy and loss, sampling various points of reference to create something universally legible as heartbreaking. Both the choreography and cinematography are gorgeous—erotic without being sexy—and I almost didn’t want to leave when the roughly 8 minute piece ended.
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