FOREIGN POLICY

The robust presentation of art by Asian artists and those of Asian descent at the Biennale Arte 2024 in Venice brings a shift to the typically ethnocentric gaze of the world's oldest international art exhibition

- Hashirin Nurin Hashimi

The first drops of rain start to fall just as we reach the front gates of the Palazzo Smith Mangilli Valmarana on the Grand Canal. It is a fitting welcome, considering how water is central to the theme of The Spirits of Maritime Crossing exhibition, a collateral event of the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (Biennale Arte 2024), held within the space—and we are, after all, in Venice, a city on water with maritime roots.

Presented by the Bangkok Art Biennale Foundation, the group exhibition features the work of artists from Southeast Asia exploring cultural flows and moving water as metaphors of the unexplored ocean and territories. We were to meet with its curator Apinan Poshyananda, chief executive and artistic director of the Bangkok Art Biennale, but the rain put paid to our plans as he is stranded at the airport. There is, understandably, an influx of visitors descending upon the Italian lagoon city in April, on this day before the pre-opening of the world’s oldest international art exhibition, also known as the Venice Biennale.

“The metaphor of water is [used to link] Asia and Europe, especially Bangkok and Venice,” Poshyananda tells us over the phone the following week. “Bangkok has been called the ‘Venice of the East’, but particularly for this project, we thought that we should expand the metaphor of water and travel [to include] not just Thai artists, but also those from our neighbouring countries.”