Abstract: In ‘Stranieri Ovunque’ (‘Foreigners Everywhere’), “estrangeiros em todos os lugares” (in Portuguese) the word ‘estrangeiro’ is etymologically linked to the notion of ‘ser estranho’. For Adriano Pedrosa, the 60th Biennale di Venezia curator, ‘ser estranho’ is to be queer, to be an outsider, to be an indigenous artist; the foreign is someone who is physically or conceptually displaced due to differences or disparities conditioned by identity, nationality, race, sexuality, liberty, wealth, believes, etc. The narratives developed by those four subjects are the focus of the Biennial di Venezia. A cartography that is to be perceived beyond what is known as the Euro-American – known also as the Western civilisation or the Global North – historical linear canon. Thus, when will be Euro-American art critics, curators, and historians willingly to delegate their fabricated authority to “foreigners” over the writing of a new canon for a global art history? If the narrative of decolonisation is to be a two-ways exchange between the parties involved, when we include the ‘foreign’ discourse, it can no longer be a two-ways structural narrative; the new reality will transcend those limiting readings towards unimagined paths, and will become a marvellous entanglement.
Keywords: La Biennale Arte di Venezia, Stranieri Ovunque, Foreigners Everywhere, Adriano Pedrosa, Migrants, Narrative, Decolonisation
BIO
Rui Gonçalves Cepeda
He has been working as an art critic, curator and researcher and art producer/manager for more than two decades. His expertise crosses the fields occupied by arts and cultural management and production, the market for and contemporary art theory (specifically photography), as well as social criticism and participation, and epicure. As an art and cultural entrepreneur, he has found the cross-cultures festival Trienal, a festival that brings together all of those interests, and, from 2013 to 2017 he has led a programme of online exhibitions. As an art critic and curator he has written about and curated works by Per Barclay, Wang Ningde, Rosângela Rennó, Jane & Louise Wilson, Kimono Yoshida, etc. and has collaborated in the commission and organisation of exhibitions by Robert Frank, Hermann Pitz, amongst others. Rui’ pertinent, singular, and analytical writings about art have been published both nationally and internationally in art magazines and newspapers, and he has contributed to books on art, participation, and democracy.
