Brazilian curator and art historian Adriano Pedrosa has been appointed Chief Curator of the 2024 Venice Biennale (60th International Art Exhibition), The exhibition will be held from April 20th to November 24th, 2024. Pedrosa is currently the artistic director of the Sao Paulo Museum of Art (MASP).

“I am honored and humbled by this important appointment, especially as the first The Latin American curator of the Biennale International Art Exhibition is in fact the first resident curator in the southern hemisphere," Pedrosa said in a statement. Artist Isaac Julien called the appointment "well deserved" in an Instagram post, while other artists and curators, including artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset And former Tate curator Mark Godfrey also echoed the news.

Since the founding of the Venice Biennale in 1895, white European males have dominated the curatorial stage, and the past decade has demonstrated a Pioneering corrections that Kwon pays homage to: In 2015, Okwui Enwezor became the first African-American curator of the exhibition; in 2022, Cecilia Alemani's curatorial logo The new direction of women's existence; the appointment of Pedrosa undoubtedly shows that Latin America's national debut behavior makes up for the rewriting of the world map.

Roberto Cicutto, President of the Venice Biennale, said: "The selection of Adriano Pedrosa as the curator of the 60th Venice Biennale The result of growing up from the experience of working with Alemani. I believe it will be crucial to build on the previous exhibition to guide our next selection."

Siccouto said in a statement that Pedrosa was known for "an open eye to contemporary art in the conception of exhibitions." He added that he hoped that curators would "discuss contemporary art not just around existing catalogs that already exist, but to provide new forms of dialogue for the contradictions, dialogues, and kinships without which art Will remain a lackluster enclave.”

As the curator of Sao Paulo Museum of Art, Pedrosa is the most famous One of the curators of Brazil and has become a leading figure in the Brazilian contemporary art scene in the past two decades. Its exhibitions emphasize queerness, feminism and decolonialism, injecting valuable experience and guiding significance into the field of contemporary art curation. The cultural origins of Latin America did not limit the artist's cognition to impoverished solipsism, sinking into a narcissistic weaving according to the pattern, on the contrary, he developed and created a new self in the distant and dynamic contemporary identity. The configuration, trying to extend the root of self, shows the rich and vivid artistic meaning under the perspective of "rewriting art history".

Pedrosa organized an exhibition Histórias Mestiças (Histórias Mestiças) at the Sao Paulo Arts Center shortly before moving to the Sao Paulo Art Center, outlining the new Spanish and Portuguese Historical silhouette of racial mixing in world colonies. The artist did not treat this period of history as an empty symbolic narrative about the glorious journey of rich white people, nor did he emphasize the deep gap between him and his ancestors by breaking the bond between the past and the present, Pedrosa Take a sober and cautious reflective stance, and use it as a frame to examine the history of Brazil—from the former colony to the empire, to the republic, to the dictatorship, until today. The “Hybrid Narratives” series continues at the Sao Paulo Museum of Art, transforming this reclusive local institution into one of the most progressive and dynamic museums in the world today.

At the Sao Paulo Museum of Art, he curated a series dedicated to Tarsila do Amaral, Beatriz Milases Solo exhibitions by leading Brazilian modernists, including Beatriz Milhazes and Wanda Pimentel. He has extensive work experience in large-scale art exhibitions. He has participated in the 1998 and 2006 Sao Paulo Biennials, the 12th Istanbul Biennial, the 2nd San Juan Triennial and the 9th Shanghai Biennale annual exhibition. In 2022, he received the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence from Bard College's Center for Curatorial Studies in recognition of his initiative "Histórias" series, which focuses on underappreciated art history.

Pedrosa also co-curated the exhibition "Afro-Atlantic Histories" at the Sao Paulo Museum of Art, telling the story of the transatlantic slave trade , bringing neglected African-American artists to the fore. The exhibition focuses on Brazil's centrality to the global slave trade and includes more than 450 works. Brazil was the destination for about 46 percent of all slave shipments from Africa to the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries, or nearly 4 million people. The exhibition will travel to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC in early 2022.

Recently, Pedrosa outlined his vision for the 60th International Art Exhibition in a statement: the exhibition he curated is called "Foreigners Everywhere" (Foreigners Everywhere, temporarily ), will focus on “artists who are themselves foreigners, immigrants, diaspora, diaspora, expats, exiles and refugees”.

The concept of "straniero" - foreigner or outsider - is part of his curatorial philosophy, pointing to " Queer artists, who are mobile among sexualities and (social) genders, often in a persecuted or outlawed stance; outsider artists, who are on the fringes of the art world, akin to autodidact and so-called folk artists; and Indigenous artists, who are often treated as foreigners in their own land.” Pedrosa, who was appointed curator, said his exhibition would reflect economic and sociopolitical issues in turn. "The context of the selected works is a world of multiple crises involving the movement and existence of people across states, peoples, territories and borders, reflecting the dangers and pitfalls in language, translation and race, expressing the Differences and disparities in identity, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, wealth and constraints on freedom," he added.

Pedrosa emphasized in a live broadcast that the Biennale will have a Nucleo Storico, a project composed of 20 participants from Latin America, Africa, the Arab world and Asia. part of the works of artists of the century. A special section of this section is dedicated to the Italian art diaspora around the world in the 20th century.

"These Italian artists traveled and migrated in Africa, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere in Europe, developing their careers and embracing local cultures - often playing an important role in the development of modernist narratives outside of Italy. effect," he said.

Siccouto said: "South American artists have always had a high level of participation in biennials. But when they are invited by a curator who is rooted in the same culture and has developed a global vision over the years , the situation is very different. This is not only an aesthetic choice, but also a geographical characteristic, just like a reverse shooting of the same scene in a movie."

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