New Zealand gives up pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024

New Zealand is giving up its national pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale . The decision had been in the air for some time (there was already talk of it after the last edition), but it was made official only a few days ago by the Creative New Zealand agency, the government body dedicated to artistic development on the national territory and which among its competencies also has everything related to the oceanic country’s participation in the world’s most important art exhibition. There will be New Zealand artists at the international exhibition, anticipates Creative New Zealand, but there will be no New Zealand pavilion. “New Zealand artists,” reads a note, "have been invited to participate in the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, Foreigners Everywhere - Foreigners Everywhere. An announcement of the names of the participating artists will be made in 2024. New Zealand’s presence at the Venice Biennale 2024 will be different from past years in that there will be no national pavilion." Instead, it is expected to participate in the 2026, 2028 and 2030 editions.

It is not overtly stated, but the decision not to participate in the 2024 edition most likely hinges on the fact that Creative New Zealand has assessed the model followed so far as inefficient and economically unsustainable . By the end of 2022, the body’s members had unanimously agreed with the findings of a report on New Zealand’s participation in the Venice Biennale, commissioned from a group of about thirty people (insiders, former curators of New Zealand pavilions at the Biennale, artists who have participated, and so and so on), and from which it had emerged, meanwhile, that the Venice Biennale creates an exceptional opportunity for New Zealand artists and the country’s arts community in general, and that Creative New Zealand should continue to support the 2026, 2028, and 2030 Biennales. But it had also emerged that participating entails significant costs.

“Selection to exhibit in Venice offers the artist an opportunity to rethink their practice in an international context,” the report read. “There is ample evidence that the recognition provided by the Biennale has led, for most of the artists in the exhibition, to further international engagements.” An important issue of inclusion then arises for New Zealand: “The inclusion of Tikanga and Mātauranga Māori cultures in the planning, development and presentation of New Zealand artists’ work in Venice offers New Zealand a number of opportunities to be more innovative in the way it interacts with other cultures and nations internationally.” However, the report noted, “New Zealand’s participation in Venice is currently designed to serve the individual artist. There is an opportunity to shift the conversation from the personal and singular to how representation provides public and collective value for New Zealanders. Personal and public value should be intimately connected.”

And then there is the issue of cost. “There is limited recognition of the benefits of representation in the event,” the report continued. “Noting the significant resource allocation required of Creative New Zealand, a series of consultations suggested that greater international benefits could be achieved through broader representation at visual arts events in the Asia Pacific region.” What’s more, New Zealand’s current model of participation in the Biennale was “widely regarded as unsustainable,” so much so that “change is needed.” Participation in the Venice Biennale is indeed very expensive. About 1.2 million New Zealand dollars (about 650,000 euros) is needed to deliver the pavilion over a two-year cycle. Creative New Zealand contributes $800,000 (about 435,000 euros), and the rest comes from provided by patrons, associations, and other visual arts organizations. In addition to these costs, there are also personnel costs. In all, Creative New Zealand supports the country’s participation with a financial contribution that amounts to about 1 percent of its total annual budget. And according to the report, the ability to sustain exhibition delivery is a critical issue. Indeed, managing complex creative projects, ranging from exhibition development to logistics, communications, marketing and the interpersonal dynamics of a creative team, is distinctly onerous, and the workload was deemed unacceptable.

“There is no simple solution to deal with the complexity of the situation,” the report concluded, however, providing some suggestions for a step-by-step approach to determine the future governance and management model for project delivery for the Biennale. The first critical decision requires a principled commitment that New Zealand support a presence in Venice. The first recommendation was to leave it to Creative New Zealand to choose the curator of the national pavilion and how artists would be selected. Then a disciplined and transparent survey of other models of exhibition organization available in New Zealand was recommended. And then, evaluation of projects also on the basis of economic factors, new written criteria for selecting artists, and greater transparency in the way the selection process is communicated to applicants and more broadly to the art community.

New Zealand first participated with a national pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2001. It has previously been known to skip an edition. At the last edition, the 59th, the country was represented by artist Yuki Kihara , who brought to Venice the exhibition Paradise Camp, curated by Nathalie King, which through a series of twelve photographs taken in the Samoa Islands against the backdrop of landscapes devastated by the 2009 tsunami, offered his own vision of paradise by redirecting the viewer to the concerns of contemporary Pacific islanders.

Image: the New Zealand Pavilion at the 2022 Biennale. Photo: Andrea Avezzù

New Zealand gives up pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.