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Founded in 1895, the Venice Biennale is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious and enduring international art exhibitions in the world. Often referred to as the “Olympics of the art world,” it has long served as a platform where contemporary artists from across the globe converge to present work that reflects—and sometimes challenges—the political, cultural, and social landscapes of their times. The 2024 edition marks the 60th International Art Exhibition, continuing a legacy of art-driven dialogue that spans over a century.

This year’s Biennale is curated by Adriano Pedrosa, artistic director of the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), and it bears the provocative theme: Foreigners Everywhere – Stranieri Ovunque. Borrowed from a series of works by the Italian collective Claire Fontaine, the theme confronts the politics of identity and belonging in an increasingly divided world. It considers the figure of the “foreigner” not only as someone from another land but also as anyone who feels estranged within their own home—be it due to race, gender, religion, class, or culture.

The Biennale’s two main venues—Giardini and Arsenale—are sprawling and dense with layered narratives. It took me two full days to walk through both locations and properly take in the range of national pavilions and curated exhibitions. Each pavilion is a portal into different perspectives, encouraging immersive, and often deeply emotional, engagement with the art on display.

Having recently returned from this experience, I found myself particularly drawn to a few pavilions that resonated both intellectually and emotionally. These included Trevor Yeung’s Hong Kong Pavilion, a haunting meditation on memory and displacement; Robert Zhao Renhui’s Singapore Pavilion, which examines ecological tensions in Southeast Asia; and works that interrogate the commodification of culture and spirituality, such as the Netherlands Pavilion with its melting chocolate altars, and the Mexico Pavilion, whose installation spoke quietly and poetically of rot, beauty, and remnants of the past.

Let me share with you my impressions of these thought-provoking presentations—each one a story, a space, and a statement worth remembering.

Trevor Yeung – Hong Kong Pavilion: “Courtyard of Attachments”

As I entered Trevor Yeung’s “Courtyard of Attachments,” I was immediately transported back to the bustling, cramped streets of Kowloon in Hong Kong, where I had lived for four years. The experience was a blend of nostalgia and introspection, encapsulating the fast-paced living conditions of the city. The exhibition featured rows of empty fish tanks that recalled the famed Goldfish Market—eerily silent now, devoid of movement or life. These tanks, devoid of their usual inhabitants, evoked a haunting calm and a subtle melancholy. There was something deeply reflective about the absence; it reminded me of the unseen weight of urban living.

The installation also featured clear plastic bags filled with water—sans the fish—suspended in place, a nod to the way fish are traditionally sold in Hong Kong. This seemingly mundane reference takes on new meaning in the context of absence and impermanence. By removing the fish, Yeung shifts the focus to the container, the vessel, and what remains when life is extracted or removed. The purple neon lighting lent the space a dystopian, futuristic edge, blurring the boundaries between memory and modernity.

The pavilion, curated by Olivia Chow, was commissioned by the M+ Museum and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Chow describes Yeung’s practice as weaving personal memories with botanical and aquatic metaphors to examine systems of care and control. The “attachments” in question extend from living beings to emotional states, mirroring the quiet, often overlooked ways we relate to one another.

Singapore Pavilion – Robert Zhao Renhui: “Seeing Forest”

It’s always a proud moment to see a fellow Singaporean artist on an international platform, and Robert Zhao Renhui’s work at the Singapore Pavilion is no exception. Titled “Seeing Forest,” the exhibition is an atmospheric meditation on the ecology of Singapore’s secondary forests. However, having experienced Zhao’s earlier work ALBIZIA – An Immersive Performance Installation at the Esplanade in 2023, I couldn’t help but notice that Seeing Forest felt more subdued in scale. ALBIZIA had transformed the entire space into a dense, enveloping performance installation, where you were immersed in the layered dramas of interspecies life.

In contrast, Seeing Forest at Venice felt more curated and distilled, offering a contemplative space rather than an immersive one. Still, Zhao’s message was clear: an ongoing exploration of the fragile balance between nature and urbanization, and how we categorize, manipulate, and control the natural world. His work examines the complicated relationship between humans and nature, co-existence and resistance, order and chaos.

Curated by Haeju Kim, Senior Curator at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), and commissioned by the National Arts Council, the exhibition encouraged viewers to reframe how we see so-called “invasive” species and marginal ecologies. As stated in the curatorial brief, “Robert’s work explores the tension between those two ideals, and the complex relationship between nature and culture, and our shared co-existence.”

Netherlands Pavilion: The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred

The moment you approach the Netherlands Pavilion, your senses are greeted by the rich, almost intoxicating scent of chocolate—a sensory prelude to an installation that is as subversive as it is seductive. Titled The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred, the exhibition is presented by the Congolese artist collective Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC) in collaboration with Renzo Martens and curator Hicham Khalidi. At first glance, the chocolate sculptures spark curiosity: Can we touch them? Are they meant to be consumed? Or are we to admire them from a reverent distance?

Crafted from clay sourced from Lusanga, a region in the Democratic Republic of Congo historically exploited for colonial plantations, the sculptures are mixed with cacao and palm oil in Amsterdam—two materials deeply tied to colonial histories of extraction and labor. In repurposing these substances, CATPC symbolically reclaims the land and narratives that were once violently taken from their communities.

Chocolate, in this context, becomes more than a sweet indulgence. It is both a material and a metaphor—once sacred and consumed by the elite in pre-colonial and colonial eras, it now serves as a symbol of global capitalism, commodity, and exploitation. The slow, inevitable melting of the sculptures embodies this transformation: from sacred offering to consumer product, from reverence to waste. In this act of decay, the exhibition blurs the boundaries between pleasure and critique, inviting us to reflect on how we consume culture, history, and each other.

Mexico Pavilion: As we marched away, we were always coming back…

Curated by Francisco Berzunza, the Mexican Pavilion presents a haunting and visually arresting installation that feels like a frozen moment from a forgotten past. At the centre of the space sits a long dining table draped in white linen, laden with meticulously arranged cutlery, plates, and food-shaped objects—all in white. But these are no ordinary banquet items: the forms resemble sea corals, shells, and barnacle-like growths, conjuring the image of a table that has been submerged, abandoned, and slowly overtaken by the sea.

Surrounding this eerie banquet are wooden chairs cloaked in thick white wax drippings, as if once illuminated by countless candles—now melted, extinguished, and silent. The overall atmosphere is opulent, yet undeniably sad and eerie. There’s a solemn, ghostly stillness to the scene, and a quiet tension between beauty and desolation.

For me, the installation evoked a sense of decay and the remnants of indulgence—as though this was once a lavish feast now left to rot, the traces of a long-past celebration or ritual no longer remembered. It felt like stepping into a dream where the echoes of joy still linger, but only as fragile memories overtaken by time and nature.

I found myself wondering: Was this a reflection on the lives we once lived? The opulence we clung to? The ecological and cultural costs we ignored? The work hints at forgotten rituals, ecological entropy, and the erosion of cultural memory—perhaps even critiquing excess, colonisation, and the fragility of existence itself. It’s an evocative tableau that doesn’t shout, but lingers in the mind like an echo of something lost.