Exploding the Canon: Modernism from Africa at the 60^th Venice Biennale

This article assesses the stakes, execution, and implications of Adriano Pedrosa’s intervention into the history of global modernism in Foreigners Everywhere, his 2024 edition of the Venice Biennale, with a focus on the biennale’s representation of artists from Africa and its diasporas. It examines the biennale’s presentation of these artists in its Nucleo Contemporaneo, including its pairing of the paintings of Brazilian artist Rubem Valentim with Mozambique-born Bertina Lopes and the batik textile compositions of Austria-born Susanne Wenger with those by Nigerian artist Ṣàngódáre Gbádégẹsin Àjàlá as successful case studies of the biennale’s aims to center the Global South in the history of modernism. It critiques the effectiveness of the main exhibition’s Nucleo Storico on portraiture and abstraction for effacing differences between the art worlds occupied by the artists on view and enabling surface-level over deep engagement with the creative contributions of these artists and the transnational networks from which their practices emerged.