ArtReview April 2024 + Brazil Supplement

ArtReview’s April features cover artist Julien Creuzet, who, in challenging Venice Biennale’s defining principles, launched his project for the French Pavilion in Martinique. The issue also explores the work of Swiss artist and provocateur Christoph Büchel (in 2015, he turned a tenth-century abbey in Venice into a mosque, which was subsequently shuttered by the city’s authorities) and Koo Jeong A, who is representing South Korea at the Venice Biennale and is known for their site-specific architectural spaces that centre the ephemeral, including elements like smell and sound. On the occasion of the Venice Biennale’s 60th anniversary, ArtReview looks back on its historical coverage of event; meanwhile, J.J. Charlesworth questions what’s next for the contemporary art biennial, now that the era of neoliberal globalisation that shaped it starts to unravel.

Also in this issue: an interview with philosopher Paul B. Preciado, about the making of his new feature film Orlando, based on Virginia Woolf’s novel of the same title; art-historian and curator Manuel Borja-Villel asks whether it’s possible to decolonise a biennial; Deepa Bhasthi looks at how, in India, true-crime documentaries are deployed to reinforce patriarchal fantasies; Cassie Packard considers art’s role in creating and recycling e-waste; and Adam Thirlwell asks what aesthetic strategies can make sense of an unstable present. Plus, exhibition and book reviews from around the world.

Including a special print only Brazil Supplement

In a special publication dedicated to Brazil, produced with the support of Instituto Guimarães Rosa, made free with the April issue, and distributed at the Venice Biienale, curator Raphael Fonseca meets the artist communities beyond São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Alongside Fonseca’s journey, six artists describe how their home cities – from the colonial-era coastal town of São Luís, Maranhão, to Belém at the mouth of the River Amazon – have inspired their work. In a special Brazil-focused edition of its long-running Future Greats series, ArtReview has asked five artists to point readers in the direction of fellow artists who have not yet garnered the attention they deserve. Reflecting on a new generation of Indigenous figures who are mixing artmaking with land rights and community activism, Daiara Tukano introduces the work of Paulo Desana, whose powerful photography and filmmaking finds political affinity in the poetry of Macuxi writer Trudruá Dorrico, four of whose works ArtReview has translated into English for the first time. Likewise featuring new names to an international audience is Adriano Pedrosa, the Brazilian curator and first Latin American to helm the Venice Biennale. In an interview, John-Baptiste Oduor finds out how Pedrosa’s work as director of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo inspired his forthcoming Venice Biennale. Throughout the publication, and extending into a guide of the best exhibitions to see in Brazil and abroad, the reader will find a series of specially commissioned artist projects by Sallisa Rosa, Bruno Baptistelli, Allan Pinheiro and Andréa Hygino, who also contributes two details from Tipos de comer, her 2022 photographic series of self-portraits in which the artist and educator poses with staple foods spelled out in alphabet spaghetti on her tongue – a work that raises questions of economic precarity and who gets to speak in modern Brazil.