“I don’t use the word ‘represent’ because I can’t represent Australia,” says softly spoken Indigenous artist Archie Moore, recovering after the packed opening of the Australian pavilion at the Venice Biennale. “I can’t even represent all Aboriginal people – because we are not a homogenous group. That is why I choose to simply say that I am presenting an exhibition for the Australian Pavilion.”
Although First Nations artists have been to Venice before, with the Scandinavian Pavilion hosting Sámi artists in 2022, this time they appear to be making a big splash at the biennale. The main exhibition, called Foreigners Everywhere, is packed with work by Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa, from all over the world. The idea is that being colonized makes you feel like a stranger in your own country, with the erasure of your culture, the plundering of your land and, at worst, the extermination of your people.
There are postcard-sized scenes of life as an indigenous woman in Guatemala by the late Rosa Elena Curruchich; an image of a wise man emerging from a sacred pond by Amazonian artist Aycoobo; and the timeless geometric carvings of Māori artist Fred Graham. More Māoris, the Mataaho Collective, won an award for their glittering canopy, made from the sturdy straps used to secure loads to trucks, which floats above viewers’ heads as they enter the Arsenale. Almost every wall text on pieces by indigenous artists mentions that this is their first time at the biennial.
Their presence has made an impact. On Saturday, Moore’s show, called ‘kith and kin’, won the top prize, the Golden Lion, a first for an Australian artist. Moore painted the interior of the pavilion black and then drew a speculative family tree on the walls dating back 65,000 years. This was written in white chalk as a nod to his school days, when he learned virtually nothing about his heritage (he laughs when I ask if he had native teachers). The dating refers to the time when the first Australians are said to have existed; they are thought to be one of the oldest peoples on earth.
If you look up at the family tree, it becomes unreadable and disappears into the darkness of the ceiling. “I try to include everyone in the family tree because if you go back three thousand years, we all have a common ancestor,” says Moore. “I am saying that we are all connected and we are all human beings living on earth and we should respect each other and show kindness.”
There is a clear lack of respect and kindness on the enormous white platform that stands in the center of the pavilion, surrounded by a ceremonial funeral pool. On this platform, Moore has collected coroner reports on 557 Aboriginal deaths in custody since 1991 – “taken from a Guardian database,” he adds. The work speaks to the vastly disproportionate incarceration rates that are devastating the lives of Indigenous Australians. “We are 3.8% of the population, but 33% of the prison population,” Moore said. “And Aboriginal people will be more likely to go to jail just for trivial offenses like littering or drinking in public.”
Now we play the leading role: the protagonists and authors of our own history
Soul Karapotó
Last October, Australia held a national referendum on whether to recognize Indigenous people in the constitution through a parliamentary advisory body of First Nations people known as the Vote. It was ignominiously defeated after the right-wing Liberal Party refused to support it. The referendum “had no impact on the work” that was already underway, Moore said, adding that the outcome was “no surprise.” Yet in their own time-consuming, quietly eloquent way, friends and relatives seem to embody the kinds of voices that Australia didn’t want to listen to, but people abroad might. “I’m not sure how many people here know about Aboriginal art, Aboriginal people or history,” says Moore. “So this might be something I can tell them about.”
Around the corner from the Australian pavilion is a bright red painted pedestal outside the American pavilion. The rooms inside are filled with bead sculptures of birds, priest-like figures with ceramic heads and multicolored fringe, as well as a video of a Native American woman named Sarah Ortegon HighWalking performing a jingle dance to thumping techno. At the entrance you can pick up a psychedelic badge with the slogan: “Every body is sacred.” Overall, it’s part rave, part powwow, part drag show, part protest march, with singing, drums, regalia and ceremonies all previously banned in North America in an effort to suppress indigenous culture.
The work is called The Space in Which to Place Me and is by Jeffrey Gibson, a Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee artist. On the Wednesday morning of the opening week, he relaxes with his Norwegian husband and their two children. Wearing a life-size slug pendant around his neck, Gibson reminisces about his time as an art student in London in the late 1990s, when he was a regular at gay club The Fridge and at cutting-edge jungle night Metalheadz.
Gibson says the starting point for his pavilion was the fact that “the term ‘nation’ means something very different to many indigenous peoples when we talk about national pavilions and nationhood.” He also wanted to show all aspects of his work, from performance to ephemera. “Terms like kitsch and queer, novelty and craft are central to my practice,” he says. “I tell my story – being queer, being American, being a parent – but also making room for you to find parallels. That is the most important thing.”
The biennial will last until November, after which Donald Trump may have been voted back for a second attack on democracy. Will Gibson’s flag-festooned, psychedelic pavilion look more like a wake than a party? “It’s scary,” says Gibson. “But I do feel that the majority of people want there to be peace and democracy in the US. This is a call for us to come together and speak loudly.”
At the bottom of the hill stands Denmark’s pavilion, although ‘Denmark’ has been crossed out and replaced by the words ‘Kalaallit Nunaat”(‘the land of the Kalaallit’). This is an exhibition by the artist Inuuteq Storch, from Greenland, a country with only 57,000 inhabitants that was colonized by the Danes in 1921. Storch says there would now be about 250,000 to 300,000 Greenlanders, but the birth rate was suppressed, with dozens of women having been fitted with contraceptive IUDs without their knowledge. More than a hundred people have now filed a lawsuit against the Danish government. “We can get university education in Denmark,” says Storch. “Yet there are these stories. So there is always a love-hate relationship.”
The 31-year-old photographer, whose character, he admits, is “very cold”, reclines in one of three hammocks outside the pavilion. While lying in it, you can enjoy a wraparound image of the view from his balcony at home, printed on the walls. Storch says the sight of the icy seascape and spectacular sky above energizes him.
His exhibition, called Rise of the Sunken Sun, consists of six photo series, including Necromancer: eerie images printed on transparent plastic that give a nod to the region’s repressed but deeply rooted shamanic spirituality. Storch shows me the tattoos on his forearms. On his left is an image of Torngarsuk, a smiling bear wearing armor. This is the ‘helping spirit’ revered by the Kalaallit people, but considered equivalent to Satan by the Danes and whose name is a swear word. On his right arm is Arnarulunnguaq, an Inuit woman wearing a fur hat. “She is the reason the fifth Arctic expedition was successful,” Storch says, referring to the conquest in the early 1920s. “But all the credit went to Knud Rasmussen. She made the food, she did all the clothes. She’s actually the real hero.”
As we talk, pro-Palestinian protesters come through the Gardineri to form a flash mob outside the Israeli pavilion – which the artist Ruth Patir decided to close until a ceasefire is reached in Gaza. “The riots are back,” Storch notes. “They are very important. Personally, I strongly support the riots against the war, but I am far removed from the war. I prefer to focus on what we can fight for in my country.”
Related: ‘Very totemic and very Aboriginal’: Australia’s participation in the Venice Biennale has a pedigree stretching back 65,000 years
This battle can be seen in the photos Storch took in Qaanaaq, one of the northernmost cities in the world. “People live among many animals, but hunting is limited by the Danes,” says Storch. “People can get fresh avocados, but they shouldn’t hunt for natural foods.” In 1953, 27 Kalaallit families were evicted from their ancestral hunting grounds to make way for a U.S. air base; now their enemy is more likely to be the climate crisis. Storch’s photographs highlight the people on the front lines of this existential struggle, often through humor – as in his shot of a hand throwing the sign of the devil’s horns at a melting ice cliff. The artist also hunts himself and, grinning, uses my phone to tell me which bird he last killed and ate. It was a “very tasty” rock ptarmigan.
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The Dutch pavilion has been taken over by a Congolese workers’ collective called CATPC, whose installation is a shocking experience. cri de coeur about the catastrophic costs of the forced extraction of cocoa and palm oil from their land. Palm oil seeps from the ceiling; the gallery is filled with sculptures made of clay, cocoa and palm oil depicting rape and pillage; a performance film calls out museums and galleries for their ‘ideologies of dominance’. In the Brazilian pavilion, which has been renamed Hãhãwpuá and contains work by a trio of indigenous artists, museums are also being sued there, with letters on display asking for the return of a sacred feathered cloak called the Tupinambá cloak – which of course went unanswered .
With its blood-stained floors and flying poison arrows, the Håhãwpuá Pavilion is as disturbing as it is beautiful. But the presence of so many indigenous artists in Venice, and the high quality of their work, has its own potential.
“Now we play the leading role, the protagonists and authors of our own history,” says Ziel Karapotó, one of the artists, who wears a bright orange coat and a traditional headdress with blue feathers. “That is new in Brazil – and especially in the art world. The planet is sick and a cure depends on all of us. But I believe that non-indigenous people should listen to us. Because our way of life could be a solution.”
• The Venice Biennale ends on November 24