Foreigners everywhere – Venice Biennale 2024

Archie Moore’s epic, hand drawn, genealogical chart compelled me to visit the 2024 Venice Biennale for the first time last year. The artwork depicting family, sovereignty, colonisation, incarceration and universality responded directly the biennale’s theme, Foreigners Everywhere.

My visit to Venice to see the ‘Foreigners Everywhere’ themed biennale coincided with King Charles III and Queen Camilla’s first official visit to Australia as reigning British monarch and consort (October 18–23, 2024). The media speculated on whether King Charles would acknowledge a letter co-signed by twelve Indigenous leaders issued on the eve of his coronation in 2023, calling for an apology and acknowledgement of genocides stemming from British colonisation. The twelve Commonwealth territories included Antigua and Barbuda, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Australia, the Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Additionally, the Australian Republic Movement used the visit to launch their campaign, ‘Wave Goodbye to Royal Reign’ with ‘Monarchy: The Farewell Oz Tour!’ 

The Biennale and the wider global context had me thinking deeply about Archie’s work, but one thing in particular that played on my mind was the expression, ‘writing on the wall’.  This idiom originates from a biblical tale in the Book of Daniel. It typically speaks of a warning foreshadowed, but sometimes it’s a sign in plain sight that is often ignored. As the Book of Daniel tells us, the King of Belshazzar’s many transgressions prompted the hand of God to write a message on the wall. The message ‘number, weight and divisions’ written in the ancient language of Aramaic was believed to be a warning meaning the King’s days were numbered, he had been weighed and found wanting causing his empire to be divided up.

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The Venice Biennale is often described as the Olympics of the art world. It hosts a nine month programme across 7,000 square metres in the historic Arsenal shipyards, armouries and the Venice Giardini. The Giardini (gardens) are home to thirty permanent pavilions. The Australian Pavilion designed by Melbourne architectural firm Denton Corker Marshall (DCM) and built in 2015, replaced an earlier 1987 temporary building. DCM described it as ‘architecturally expressed as a white box within a black box’.

Fast forward to 2024, the Australian Pavilion is black inside and out, with white chalked writing on the wall telling a portentous story from the beginning of time. This story also documented the ongoing impacts of British imperialism and settler colonialism. Federal Government agency, Creative Australia, commissioned the exhibit, kith and kin, by Archie Moore (Kamilaroi/Bigambul). Moore’s work uses conceptual, research-based portrayals of self and national histories, and this paid commission curated by Ellie Buttrose, produced an epic work in the Australian Pavilion, which went on to win the highest award, a Golden Lion, for Best National Participation. The first time Australia had won the award in five decades of participation.

Archie Moore, kith and kin 2024, detail.

The earliest archaeological evidence of Aboriginal presence on the continent now known as Australia, is dated 65,000 years ago, long predating both the Book of Daniel (530 BC) and British imperialism (1588 – ongoing), forming a testament to deep time. Round and round, up and down, the familial lines of kith and kin mark proximity and distance across 2,400 generations.

Time is immortalised in the black womb-like space, and seemingly gives birth to ‘everywhen’ a word used by Moore and explained in the exhibition notes. He said, ‘Australian anthropologist, William Edward Stanner conveyed the idea in his germinal 1956 essay, The Dreaming, in which he coined the term ‘everywhen’: ‘one cannot “fix” the dreaming in time: it was, and is, everywhen’.’

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I am descended from Irish, Scottish and English settlers with no more than four to five generations on the land once described as terra nullis. Whilst I was viewing Moore’s monumental family tree, the Australian head of State, King Charles III viewed his subjects in Australia. His visit comes 254 years after the east coast of Australia was claimed under instruction from his fourth great grandfather, King George III in 1770 (noting that the First Fleet arrived 18 years later). To put it into generational terms,  the British colonial project spans 10 generations. Moore’s sketched genealogical chart going back 65,000 years eclipses the British colonial project a staggering 255 times. But Moore’s story wasn’t just showing us time in the form of a family tree, he was also telling us how colonial practices are passed down across the generations.

The colonial transgressions were smudged in chalk: genocide, massacres, disease and lost records creating voids and knowledge gaps. At eye level, reading contemporary family names of this generations dissolves into derogatory names, familiar at first from recent generations post settlement to the unfamiliar slurs drawn from colonial records before blending into Kamilaroi and Bigambul language names depicting the complex kinship system reaching far back into deep time.

Archie Moore, kith and kin 2024.

In the heart of the space, reams of coronial inquests into Aboriginal deaths in custody hover above a memorial pool. As the exhibition concept notes, ‘the australian state was founded on the carceral system, with the british establishing penal colonies from 1788. archie incorporates archival records referencing his kin that evidence how laws and government policies have long been imposed upon first nations peoples.’ [Author’s note – sic erat scriptum – all text associated with this exhibition was published in small caps]

The Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody 1987–1991, known as the Muirhead Commission, interrogated all deaths in custody between 1980 and 1989 and the actions taken in each case. It found that self-determination and addressing health, schooling, employment, and housing inequality would contribute to a lower incarceration rate. A total of 339 recommendations were made. ‘Royal commissions are the highest form of inquiry on matters of public importance. They are only established in rare and exceptional circumstances’. [1] However more than 34 years later, many recommendations are yet to be implemented.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples raised concerns following a periodic review into Australia’s human rights record in 2021, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the Muirhead Commission. The Human Rights Watch organisation reported, ‘Several countries raised Australia’s continued failure to reduce the significant over-representation of Indigenous Australians in the criminal justice system. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people comprise 29 percent of Australia’s adult prison population, but just 3 percent of the national population.’ [2] 

If we consider the Book of Daniel’s maxim, the Royal Commission’s findings written not on a wall, but on paper, marks 12,400+ days and counting –  spanning more than a generation – of inaction.

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During King Charles III’s visit to Australia, his official speech to Australia’s Parliament recognised the “long and sometimes difficult journey towards reconciliation” and specifically noted, “It is in all our interests to be good stewards of the world, and good ancestors to those who come after us, because we are all connected – both as a global community, and with all that sustains life”. The King stopped short of acknowledging the Indigenous leaders’ open letter and the fatal role of his ancestors in colonialism.

Following the speech, it was Senator Lidia Thorpe who called out the impacts of colonialism before being escorted from the premises, ‘You are not sovereign, you are not our King, you committed a genocide against our people. Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us. Our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people. You destroyed our land. Give us a treaty, we want a treaty in this country. You are a genocidalist. This is not your land. This is not your land. You are not my king. You are not our king…’ [3]

Archie Moore, kith and kin 2024, detail.

The King acknowledged the global polycrisis in his speech. “With the Covid-19 pandemic barely behind us, the impacts of climate change deepening, and the horrors of war, death and needless destruction all too visible, this moment in our history requires both ancient and new thinking. It requires more of our minds, our hearts and our hands.  It also requires us to come together with courage, care and compassion. The challenges we now face call us to show not only constancy and valour, but also humanity, empathy and generosity of spirit.“

Have the colonial and imperial projects been weighed up and found wanting? 

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kith and kin, with its writing on the wall to time immemorial, the reams of coronial inquests, and the opaque black ink pool, asks the viewer to reflect, to hold space for what is known and to make space for what is not commonly understood.

‘first nations peoples of australia are among the oldest continuous living cultures on earth … this celestial map of names — fragile chalk on blackboard — addresses the insufficient dissemination of indigenous histories.'[5]

Moore’s work was right at home in an international exhibition celebrating foreigners everywhere with ‘331 artists and collectives living in and between 80 countries – including Hong Kong, Palestine, and Puerto Rico – a testament to how artists have always travelled and moved about under various circumstances’. Colonisation and decolonisation were constant themes. 

The Danish Pavilion, the Puerto Rico exhibit in the central pavilion and Bolivia’s adaptive reuse of the Russian Pavilion (noting Russia’s absence owing to the military conflict with Ukraine and a deal with Bolivia to use the space) were the stand out exhibits for me. 

Rise of the Sunken Sun, by Innuteq Storch of the Kalaalit Nunaat (the land of the Kalaallit, the Greenlanders) looked at the Danish Kingdom’s colonisation of Greenland through the official lens of a government photographer (shown on the left of the collage) and the personal lens of the Indigenous artist’s family photo collection capturing a decolonised perspective (shown on the right of the collage below).

Rise of the Sunken Sun, collage of photographs by John Møller (1867-1935) and Inuuteq Storch (1989- )

Bolivia’s exhibit, Qhip Nayra Uñtasis Sarnaqapxañani, showcased:

‘the principle of living well of the Aymara people, who, out of respect for their ancestral territory, disregard borders and live straddling three countries at once. The territorial unity is also reflected in its concept of time: the past and the future are not dichotomous, but rather advance intertwined, continually meeting and giving meaning to the present.’

The Puerto Rican exhibition, The Museum of the Old Colony, an intentionally ironic title, highlighted the ongoing historic and current colonial impacts with striking black and white photographs. In this linked video the curator reflected on what he sought to achieve, ‘If my installation can provoke people to ask themselves what complicity they have in this whole system of oppression, then maybe that’s the beginning.’ 

Pablo Delano, The Museum of the Old Colony (2024)

The artist’s medium of choice whether it be written words, paint, camera, dance, music, all their creations could be said to be a form of ‘writing on the wall’. A sign. An interpretation. A warning foreshadowed. Collectively, the Venice Biennale artists told stories of empires divided up, borders drawn and redrawn, nations shaped and reshaped, forced ideologies or resistance, fulfilling the artistic duty of reflecting the times.

As Nina Simone reflected in an interview in 1969 at the height of the civil rights movement,  “An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times. I think that is true of painters, sculptors, poets, musicians. As far as I’m concerned, it’s their choice, but I choose to reflect the times and situations in which I find myself. That, to me, is my duty…”  [6] 

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Moore’s epic work of writing on the wall is deliberate. The chalk temporarily marks universal connections to time and space for all of us to see. It shows we’re born from a celestial map of ancestors, there are no boundaries and national borders in amongst our kith and kin, until it’s drawn by a carceral system built by colonialism and imperialism.

How long can humanity harbour these fatal transgressions? Are the days numbered? Has it been weighed and found wanting? Will the empires be divided up and the people liberated?

As King Charles III stated, ‘this moment in our history requires both ancient and new thinking’, Archie Moore’s universal story of kith and kin strikes me as one such place to start.

Postscript: In February 2025, Creative Australia revoked a public announcement for the 2026 Venice Biennale, cancelling the appointment of internationally renowned Lebanese Australian, Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino, due to a perceived risk that the appointment will generate divisive debate. Much has been said and written about this self made saga, which has since unquestionably generated the divisive debate it sought to quell with more than 4400 petition signatories calling for the reinstatement of Sabsabi. Some commentary has suggested that Archie Moore’s work might have been too provocative in an Australian election year, although some colonial subjects are more acceptable for public discourse than others.  It remains to be seen whether the Australian Pavilion will be empty for the 2026 Venice Biennale, a possible outcome admitted by Creative Australia’s CEO Adrian Collette in a Senate Estimates Hearing. The most prescient article I’ve read on this subject that speaks to the notion of the writing on wall is Jess Scully’s article Who Stands With the Arts.

Endnotes

[1] Royal Commission

[2]  Human Rights Watch, ‘Australia: Address Abuses Raised at UN Review Countries Criticize Failures on Refugees, Children, Indigenous Rights‘, 20 January 2021.

[3] Lorena Allam and Sarah Collard, ‘Australian senator Lidia Thorpe confronted King Charles with a string of claims. How do they stack up?‘ The Guardian, 22 October 2024.

[4] Ewa Staszewska, ‘Embarrassing and disrespectful’: Lidia Thorpe faces backlash over King Charles protest‘ Sky News Australia, 22 October 2024.

[5] Creative Australia kith and kin by Archie Moore, Venice Biennale, 2024.

[6] Nina Simone, television interview, believed to be Black Journal hosted by Lou House on 27 October, 1969.