About referents and referred
View of Takapau (2022), by the collective Mataaho, at the 60th Venice Biennale
The collective Claire Fontaine gave international visibility to the Turinese anarchist group Stranieri Ovunque with an artwork created in 2004, Foreigners everywhere. This work has been materialized ever since in translations into different languages, written on neon signs. Twenty years ago, no one could imagine that it would prosper as a title of art show, but it happened. In 2009 it gave title to the 31st Panorama of Brazilian Art at MAM São Paulo, translated into a dead language, Old Tupi, as Mamõyaguara opá mamo pupé. This year, 2024, translated into Italian, it gives title to the 60th Venice Biennale. Both exhibitions have the same Brazilian curator, Adriano Pedrosa, current artistic director of Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP).
A lot of things change over time. Opinions, points of view and values fluctuate depending on circumstances, information and personal maturity. Concepts, however, submit to the rigor of logic, they are much more stable. There are different concepts for the same object, depending on context, time or system of thought, but it is not usual that a concept stops referring to one object in order to refer to another. It is also unusual that it empties itself as such, so as not to refer to anything else but itself. Although unusual, this happened. In the fifteen years that separate Mamõyaguara opá mamo pupé and Stranieri ovunque, the concept of foreigner has been emptied itself to the point of not referring to any idea. It became a rhetoric expedient to fill a discursive void.
Being the definition the linguistic expression of a concept, it is worthy to remember what defines the foreigner (straniero or mamõ). Foreigner is someone who comes from outside, from another people, region or country. It is the other (the referred) in relation to me (the referent). The expression “foreigners everywhere” becomes meaningful when inserted into a sociolinguistic context. This operation validates Foreigners Everywhere conceptually as a work of art and distinguishes it from factual description.
By the time Foreigners Everywhere gave its title to 31st Panorama, the expression singularized the assertation of a referent (the self, the Brazilian) represented by Old Tupi, a dead language. Translated into the language of those people who inhabited the Brazilian coast at the beginning of colonization, the expression referred to the other who came from overseas and who, over time, became Brazilian (the referent) in a long and violent process of domination. By proposing an exhibition of Brazilian art made by foreign artists, the curator took up this idea by showing how referencing converts what is referred into a referent. Almost all works exhibited at the 31st Panorama referenced Brazilian modernism from the 1950s and 1960s, alluding to architectural, artistic and musical works renowned abroad. Both critics and local artists dispised this exhibition, but the public felt an opportunity to perceive themselves as Brazilians through the eyes of a foreigner—or rather, to perceive themselves according to a “Brazilianness” that today would be considered elitist. Panorama proposed a game of reflections in which the other merged into the self, and the self, into the other.
Fifteen years later, the same curator borrowed Claire Fontaine's work to give title to another art show, an international one. The exhibition is the Venice Biennale, created in 1895 as a stage for diplomatic demonstrations of soft power, a mission it has been fulfilling to this day. As long as the biennale has existed, there have been foreigners everywhere. They are artists, curators and visitors. Stranieri ovunque is a descriptive and obvious title, to say the least.
But the obvious can bring challenges. In the case of an international art biennial, there are numerous challenges. Initially, it is necessary to think about the plurality of relationships between referents and those referred to in highly unstable contexts such as those of contemporary art. It is also necessary to map artistic production in different regions of the globe and penetrate the minefield of international relations. These tasks are too ambitious to be accomplished in only two years of research. Choices are necessary.
First choice, the decisive one: to restrict the mapping of artistic production. Mapping art production in Southern hemisphere is a very convenient choice. The South is less populous, its influence on geopolitical scene is soft and most of its countries have colonial past. In other words, this choice justifies a superficial approach of the decolonial agenda. It brings also a privileged opportunity to highlight Brazilian art, not the one produced currently in alternative circuits, but that institutionalized and endorsed by museums. There is an additional touch of nationalism in showing it on the iconic displays Lina Bardi designed for MASP in the 1960’s.
Brazilian art occupies the center of the Venice Biennale literally and symbolically. In this curatorial fiction, it is presented as a (self) historical reference (sic). Biennale’s “Historical Section” exhibits mainly Brazilian modernist paintings executed by foreigners. It is a fact that Alfredo Volpi and Victor Brecheret were not born in Brazil, but were they more foreigners than natives like Tarsila do Amaral, Di Cavalcanti and Portinari? In a “Historical Section”, shouldn’t there be artists from the first nations? Or descendants from enslaved people, like Aleijadinho?
Obviousness gets complicated at this point. As thinking about the referred without the referent is nonsense, the solution is to eliminate the referred. You just have to invent a new concept for “foreigner”. It's a magical solution. Instantly, foreign stops being what comes from outside, the other in relation to me, and becomes an affection of the self, my feeling in relation to the Other. The feeling generalizes the Other into patriarchy, colonialism, racism, homophobia and transphobia, but not, ironically, into xenophobia. This maneuver makes Stranieri ovunque an exhibition of referents. Or rather, self-referential. Works and artists refer to themselves as subjects identified with and through feelings related to this transcendentalized Other.
Everything happens in this Babel of self-referents. The works on display at the Arsenale and in the central pavilion of the Giardini are intertwined as if in a kaleidoscope in which images are reduced to fragments of light. Everything has the same weight, despite the work results from decades of work or is a casual scribble on a sheet of paper. The predominance of two-dimensional format and, in certain rooms, the arrangement of pictures in constellations contributes to visual confusion, emphasizing the equalizing effect that only a deep knowledge of their monetary value can undo. In this sense, it is an art fair.
Embroidery, braiding and tapestries mark presence at this biennial. Installed at the entrance to the Arsenale, Takapau (2022), a ceiling piece made of polyester and steel strips woven by Maori artists of the Mataaho collective, announces that contemporary production from the Global South is guided by traditional techniques and crafts, although occasional concessions to the colonizer’s old and good oil on canvas. By emphasizing the connection between self-referent and traditional knowledge, the exhibition reinforces stereotypes, suggesting that the self-referent ignores, despises or resists new technologies. It’s remarkable the scarcity of video installations, digital, multi-sensorial works or those made with AI resources. Do “foreigners” from the South only express themselves through the technics of their original cultures? Or is there no technology in this part of the world?
Are there interesting works? Yes, absolutely. One of them is a video, one of the few shown at the biennial. We were here: history of black africans in renaissance Europe (2024), by Afro-Italian Fred Kuwornu, addresses the referent-referred relationship in a historical and artistic ways. In 53 minutes, the video communicates what the whole exhibition avoids stating: that “foreign” is the other that I explore, subjugate, hide, exterminate and assimilate.
The best part of the 60th Venice Biennale is not seen in the central pavilions, but in national representations’ ones. As usual, some countries adopt the theme of the main exhibition, others do not. In this edition, many colonizing countries with imperialist aspirations embraced the motto “foreigners everywhere” and treated it with the objectivity of those who impose the rules of the game on the rest of the world. Nothing is more objective than recognizing their predatory past and declaring that it has been overcome by calling on foreigners as their representatives. This is what Great Britain does with the solo of Ghanaian British artist John Akonfrah in its pavilion and what the US does inviting to theirs Jeffrey Gibson, a queer artist from Cherokee people.
Brazil also embraced the motto of the biennial. It shows works by Glicéria Tupinambá curated by Denilson Baniwa, Arissana Pataxó and Gustavo Caboco, all of them indigenous. They come from different peoples, but they represent the same (sad) reality: being foreigners in their own land.