Why the Art Biennale?

The Open Atelier project is very happy to be represented at the 60th International Art Exhibition, since on this occasion La Biennale di Venezia have offered a special project to us – a Session – where we can perform our work after 5 interdisciplinary working days.

This year’s Exhibition, titled Foreigners Everywhere is drawn from a series of works started in 2004 by the Paris-born and Palermo-based Claire Fontaine collective. The works consist of neon sculptures in different colours that render in a growing number of languages the words “Foreigners Everywhere”. The phrase comes, in turn, from the name of a Turin collective who fought racism and xenophobia in Italy in the early 2000s.

The expression Stranieri Ovunque – explains the curator Adriano Pedrosa - has several meanings. First of all, that wherever you go and wherever you are you will always encounter foreigners— they/we are everywhere. Secondly, that no matter where you find yourself, you are always truly, and deep down inside, a foreigner.

For Open Atelier our focus will be both on Pedrosa’s programme and cultural heritage. We are aware that the aim of the European Year of Cultural Heritage (2018) was to encourage more people to discover and engage with Europe’s cultural heritage, and to reinforce a sense of belonging to a common European space.

All over the world a lot of cultural heritage is available, but especially in Europe there is a common cultural heritage worth remembering, discovering (again) and be aware of.

In a world where the cultural diversity is increasing, the shared cultural heritage is a tool to promote intercultural understanding and create relations between identities, representations and performances of history, this by connecting higher educational institutions with cultural institutions and companies to working an interdisciplinary, new and innovative way.

For those reasons and many more, we created Open Atelier, a Creative Europe Project including six partners in total, representing five European Countries (Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Italy & Slovenia) with interdisciplinary roots.

See you at the 60th International Art Exhibition in Venice!

Art Museums of Skagen