by ‘I’m not using the word ‘exhibition’ because I can’t represent Australia,” says the softly-spoken indigenous artist Archie Moore, recovering from the fully-opened opening of the Australian pavilion at the Biennale of Venice. “I can’t even represent all Aboriginal people – because we’re not a homogenous group. So I choose to say that I am presenting an exhibition for the Australian pavilion.”
Although Venice has had First Nations artists before, with the Nordic Pavilion hosting Sámi artists in 2022, this time they seem to have passed through the masse at the biennale. The main exhibition, called Foreigner in a Community Place, is full of their work, received from all over the world by the Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa. The idea is that you feel like a foreigner in your own country, when you are colonized, with the destruction of your culture, the robbery of your land, and at least the extermination of your family.
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 wood carvings of Māori artist Fred Graham. More Māoris, the Mataaho Collective, won a prize for their glittering canopy made from the heavy-duty straps used to secure loads on trucks, which passes over the heads of spectators as they enter the Arsenale. Almost all wall texts for pieces by Indigenous artists note that this is their first time at the biennale.
His presence has made an impact. On Saturday, Moore’s show, called kith and kin, won the top prize, the Golden Lion, the first prize for an Australian artist. Moore painted the inside of the pavilion black and then drew a speculative family tree on the walls going back 65,000 years. This was in white chalk as a nod to his school days, when he learned almost nothing about his heritage (he laughs when I ask if he had any Native teachers). The dating refers to when the first Australians are believed to have existed – they are thought to be one of the oldest people on earth.
As you look up at the family tree, it becomes illegible and fades into the darkness of the ceiling. “I’m trying to include everyone in the tree, because if you go back 3,000 years we all have a common ancestor,” says Moore. “I’m saying that we’re all connected and we’re all human beings living on Earth and we should respect each other and show kindness.”
There is a distinct lack of respect and kindness on the huge white platform that sits in the middle of the pavilion, surrounded by a ceremonial wailing pool. On this platform, Moore is accumulating coroner’s reports on 557 Aboriginal deaths in custody since 1991 – “sourced from the Guardian database,” he says. The work speaks to the wildly disproportionate prison rates that blight the lives of Indigenous Australians. “We’re 3.8% of the population, but 33% of the prison population,” says Moore. “And it will be easier for Aboriginal people to go to prison just for trivial offenses like littering or drinking in public.”
Now we are in the main role – the main characters and authors of our own history
Ziel Karapotó
Last October, Australia had a national referendum on whether it would recognize indigenous people in the constitution through a parliamentary advisory body of First Nations people called the voice. It was unceremoniously dissolved after the right-wing Liberal party refused to support it. “The referendum didn’t affect the work”, which was already underway, says Moore, adding that the result was “no surprise”. However, in its own, quietly timeless way, kith and kin seem to embody the kind of voices Australia refused to listen to, but people overseas might. “I’m not sure how much people here know about Aboriginal art or Aboriginal people or history,” says Moore. “So maybe this is one thing I can tell them about.”
Around the corner from the Australian pavilion, there is a bright red painted pedestal outside the American pavilion. The interior rooms are filled with beaded sculptures of birds, priestly figures with ceramic heads and colorful rims, as well as a video of a Native American woman named Sarah Ortegon HighWalking doing a jingle dance to thumping techno. At the entrance, you can pick up a psychedelic badge with the motto: “Every body is sacred.” Overall, it’s part rave, part powwow, part drag show, part protest march, with singing, drumming, regalia and ceremonies that were completely banned in North America in an effort to suppress Native culture.
Called The Space in Which to Place Me, the work is by Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson. On Wednesday morning of opening week, he is relaxing with his Norwegian husband and two children. Wearing a large snail pendant around his neck, Gibson is reminiscing about his time as an art student in London in the late 1990s, when he was a regular at the Fridge gay club and the fateful Metalheadz jungle night.
Gibson says the starting point for his pavilion is that “the term ‘nation’ means something very different to many Indigenous people when we talk about national pavilions and nationality”. He also wanted to show all aspects of his work, from performance to ephemera. “Terms like kitsch and queer and originality and craftsmanship are central to my practice,” he says. “I’m telling my story – being queer, being American, being a parent – but also making space for you to find a parallel. That is the most important thing.”
The biennale runs until November, by which point Donald Trump may be voted back for a second attack on democracy. Will Gibson’s psychedelic flag-draped pavilion look more like a relic than a celebration? “It’s scary,” says Gibson. “But I think the majority of voices want peace and democracy in the United States. This is a call for us to come together and speak up.”
Down the hill is the Denmark Pavilion, although “Denmark” is crossed out and the words “Kalaallit Nunaat” (“the land of the Chalalites”). This is an exhibition by the Inuuteq artist Storch, originally from Greenland, a country of only 57,000 that was colonized by the Danes in 1921. Storch says there would be around 250,000 to 300,000 Greenlanders now, but the birth rate was suppressed, with scores women fitted with contraceptive coils without their knowledge. More than 100 are now suing the Danish government. “We can get a university education in Denmark,” says Storch. “But these stories exist. So there’s always this love/hate relationship.”
The 31-year-old photographer, who he admits has a “very liberating” disposition, is sitting on one of three benches outside the pavilion. While in them, you can enjoy a folded image of the view from his balcony at home printed on the walls – Storch says the sight of the freezing seascape and the stunning sky above gives him energy.
His exhibition, called Rise of the Sunken Sun, comprises six photographic series, including Necromancer – eerie images printed on transparent plastic that nod to the region’s repressed but ingrained shamanic spirituality. Storch shows me the tattoos on his forearms. On the left is an image of Torngarsuk, a smiling bear wearing a harness. This is the “helping spirit” revered by the Kalaallit people, but considered by the Danes to be equivalent to Satan and whose name is a swear word. On her right hand is Arnarulunnguaq, an Inuit woman in a fur bonnet. “She’s the reason the fifth Polar Expedition was successful,” says Storch, referring to the conquest in the early 1920s. “But the full credit went to Knud Rasmussen. She was doing the food, she was doing all the clothes. She is a true hero.”
As we speak, pro-Palestinian protesters come through the Gardineri to create a billboard outside the Israeli pavilion – which artist Ruth Patir has decided to close until a ceasefire is reached in Gaza. “The riots are here again,” Storch said. “They are very important. Personally, I am very much in support of the riots against the war, but I am far from the war. I would rather focus on what we can fight for in my country.”
Related: ‘Very totemic and very Aboriginal’: Australian entry at Venice Biennale is a family tree dating back 65,000 years
These struggles are reflected in the photographs taken by Storch in Qaanaaq, one of the northernmost towns in the world. “His people live around a lot of animals, but the Danes have limited hunting,” says Storch. “People can get fresh avocados, but they’re not allowed to hunt for natural food.” In 1953, 27 Kalaallit families were forced off their ancestral hunting grounds to make way for a US air base; now, the climate emergency is more likely to be an enemy. Storch’s photographs highlight the people at the forefront of these existential struggles, often through humor – as in a shot of a hand waving the devil’s horn sign in front of a melting ice cliff. The artist also hunts himself, and with a smile, he uses my phone to tell me the last bird he killed and ate. It was a “very tasty” rock ptarmigan.
Related: The ‘Luminous’ truck strap artwork won the Biennale’s prestigious first prize for New Zealand
The Dutch pavilion is headed by a Congolese workers’ collective called CATPC, and its installation is a surprise cri de coeur about the devastating cost of the forced extraction of cacao and palm oil from their land. Palm oil oozes from the ceiling; the gallery is filled with sculptures made of clay, cocoa and palm oil depicting rapture and vibration; performance film puts museums and galleries to the test of their “ideologies of dominance”. Over in the Brazilian pavilion, renamed Hãhãwpuá and featuring work by three Indigenous artists, there are also museum indictments, and letters on display asking for the return of a sacred feathered mantle known as the Tupinambá cloak – which needless to say went unanswered . .
With its blood-stained floors and flying poison arrows, Hãhãwpuá’s 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.
“We are now in the main role, the protagonists and authors of our own history,” says Ziel Karapotó, one of the artists, who is wearing a bright orange coat and a traditional blue feather headdress. “That is something new in Brazil – and especially in the world of art. The planet is sick and healing depends on us all. But I believe that the non-Indigenous need to listen to us. Because our way of life could be the solution.”
• The Venice Biennale ends on 24 November
