FEOFEO in “NO MAN IS AN ISLAND” – LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA – GRENADA PAVILION
FEOFEO in “NO MAN IS AN ISLAND”
LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA – 60th International Art Exhibition
GRENADA PAVILION – PALAZZO ALBRIZZI CAPELLO
Cannaregio, F.TA SAN ANDREA 4118 – 30121 Venice (VE)
curated by Daniele Radini Tedeschi
commissioner Susan Mains
20 APRIL – 24 NOVEMBER 2024
Opening: 20 APRILE 2024 ore 17:00
20 April to 30 September | 11 am – 7 pm
1 October to 24 November | 10 am – 6 pm
Free entrance, closed on Monday
LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA – 60th International Art Exhibition
GRENADA PAVILLION – PALAZZO ALBRIZZI CAPELLO
“NO MAN IS AN ISLAND”
«No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main […]. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee» these are the poet John Donne’s verses that summarize a humanity bound by a web of stories, to the extent that one man’s death becomes a collective, communal mourning.
Furthermore, Édouard Glissant, in Poétique de la Relation, states: “We travel on the surface, in the expanse, weaving our imaginary structures and not filling up the voids of a science, but rather, as we go along, removing boxes that are too full so that in the end we can imagine infinite volumes”.
In Le Discours Antillais, the Martinican writer describes the Caribbeans as a population that doesn’t have a single-rooted identity but rather one in constant transformation. Moreover, it is interesting to note that the term “discourse” is derived from “discurrō”, meaning “running back and forth”.
Relation and movement would thus imply knowledge, openness to the other and mutual exchange, while still maintaining the right to opacity, that is, to one’s own singularity inspired by coexistence and perpetual evolutions.
In line with this position appears to be the statement of the curator Adriano Pedrosa, regarding the theme of the 2024 edition “Foreigners Everywhere”, whose title carries a double meaning: «First of all, it means that wherever you go and wherever you are, you will always meet foreigners: they are/we are everywhere.
Secondly, that regardless of one’s location, deep down one is always, truly, a foreigner».
The foreignness of each individual becomes a community as one “practices” knowledge -a concept opposed to “having” knowledge- through the attention paid to the relationships between things or simply by telling their stories in the context of a mutual “correspondence” (Tim Ingold), in order for the community to signify a “giving of self together”.
Therefore, “No man is an island” will embody an exhibition path in which the centrality of “relationship” will be a fundamental requirement for the individual and collective growth.
Several artworks will be inspired by the naturalistic elements of the Grenada land perceived as stratifications of cultures, cohabitations of times, wounds, and testimonies of a present that embraces history mingling with other languages, other laws, and other domains.
Everything follows a continuous line; everything appears so different yet nothing is foreign. In each plant, in every clod, in the glimpses of the sky, a thousand gazes are absorbed; on the cobblestones of the streets still echoes the thunderous sound of endless footsteps.
The advice is to project oneself into the “complex system of a relational identity”. Some of the artists in the exhibition, on the contrary, critically ponder on the contradictions, the tragedies caused by a “point of view of the system” that is monolithic in its certainties, the result of hybris and not of reciprocity, that, conversely, would carry on its shoulders
Feofeo, 2023 – THE WALL OF DESIRES
Acrylic, quarz, limestone mortar and fire burns with paper inserts on canvas – cm 140 x 170
