Something for the Week, Issue 8
By Keshav AnandWelcome back to Something for the Week — your weekly selection of things to look at, read, listen to, and experience across the arts. From the buzz of the 60th Venice Biennale’s inauguration to a film festival exploring queer Southeast Asian narratives, April promises to be an entertaining month.
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60th Venice Biennale, Venice
Overseen by Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa, the 60th Venice Biennale, titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, endeavours to give space and visibility to historically marginalised voices through an ambitious and multidisciplinary programme. Don’t miss SC’s on-going series, Behind the Biennale, a collection of essays from the curators of this year’s national pavilions. Alongside the main affair at the Giardini and Arsenale, innumerable satellite events and shows will take place across Venice during this busy period.
20 Apr-24 Nov 2024 (pre-opening from 17-19 Apr)
Sofía Salazar Rosales at Alice Amati, London
Sofía Salazar Rosales, originally from Ecuador and Cuba, explores the concept of fantasmas, or spirits, which exist in a realm between sentimentality and symbolism. Through the mediums of sculpture, installation, and architecture, Rosales’ artistic expressions become integral parts of the environments they occupy. By transcending traditional categorisations and delving into unseen and overlooked aspects of the world, they fluidly traverse mediums, revealing unseen details.
16 Apr-25 May 2024
Queer East Festival 2024, London
Queer East is a cross-disciplinary festival that showcases boundary-pushing LGBTQ+ cinema, live arts, and moving image work from East and Southeast Asia and its diaspora communities. The initiative’s fifth edition runs from 17-28 April in venues across London, exploring notions of what it means to be queer and Asian today.
17-28 Apr 2024
Idling Skein by Sunwon Chang at CYLINDER, Seoul
Seoul-based gallery CYLINDER — whose multidisciplinary programme focuses on emerging and experimental practices — presents Idling Skein, a solo exhibition of works by artist Sunwon Chang. Using a fine brush on canvas and a precise carving technique to shape the wooden frames that hold her paintings, Chang creates abstract landscapes that draw inspiration from the language and structure of myths.
Until 12 May 2024
Hamid Zénati: All-Over
Operating between Munich and Algiers, Hamid Zénati’s artistic endeavours span various mediums, encompassing painting, textiles, interior and fashion design, as well as photography. This first monograph on the artist showcases textile creations from a career straddling five decades. The publication includes perspectives from leading thinkers on art and culture, with contributions from Wassila Bedjaoui, Andrea Lissoni, Natasha Marie Llorens, Chus Martínez, and more. Available at After 8 Books.
Aria Dean: Abattoir at ICA, London
Artist and writer Aria Dean delves into a theoretical critique of representational systems, analysing how questions of race and power intersect with aesthetic theory, image networks, and visibility. For the New York-based artist’s first exhibition in the UK, the ICA’s main gallery is showing a site-specific film installation with immersive 8-channel sound. The animated film navigates the interior of an empty slaughterhouse, exploring ideas around modernity and death on conceptual and material levels.
Until 5 May 2024
Feature image: © Hamid Zénati Estate; Photographer unknown