A vibrant reimagining of the national pavilion at the Venice Biennale, exploring identity, hospitality, and cultural representation.
Renowned for her immersive environments, Sol Calero reimagines the concept of the national pavilion, transforming it into a vibrant space adorned with geometric patterns, sloping roofs, and curving terraces. Her installation explores themes of cultural identity, representation, and self-exoticisation, particularly in the context of tourism.
Running from 20 April to 24 November 2024, Calero’s pavilion invites audiences to engage with questions of belonging, hospitality, and the intersections of tradition and modernity.
This bold and thought-provoking work reflects the Bukhman Foundation’s commitment to fostering artistic innovation and realising ambitious artist-led commissions.
About Sol Calero
Sol Calero, a Berlin-based, Caracas-born artist, creates work that explores themes of representation and identity, often through immersive environments filled with colourful patterns and textiles. Embracing a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, found objects, textiles, video, sound, and site-specific installations, Calero’s conceptual approach is underscored by weighty questions surrounding hospitality and belonging. At the Biennale Arte, the artist has approached the invitation to design a site-specific installation in the Giardini della Biennale with her signature sensitivity. Here, the concept of the national pavilion is cheerfully reinvented as an environment formed of a kaleidoscope of shapes and colours, with geometrically painted walls, sloping roofs, monochromatic columns and fences, and curving terraces. Calero’s project reflects her continuing interest in how objects, architectural forms, and interiors signify cultural preconceptions and also articulate forms of self-exoticisation, as often seen in sites related to tourism.