In this video, Vlatka Horvat, the artist representing Croatia at the Venice Art Biennale 2024, guides us through her exhibition. The show is titled “By the Means at Hand” and is located at Fàbrica 33 (Calle Larga dei Boteri, Cannaregio 5063).
Official description: Vlatka Horvat’s project for the Croatian Pavilion – By the Means at Hand – exists as both a dynamic, accumulating exhibition of artworks by a large group of international artists living “as foreigners”, reflecting on questions and urgencies of diasporic experience, and as a compelling, intimate, social, and performative exchange between them. The pavilion also doubles as Horvat’s temporary artist’s studio over the course of the biennial. Horvat has invited a large number of artists living in diaspora in different countries to engage with her in a series of reciprocal exchanges of artworks and other materials, all of which will be sent between Venice and other places by improvised means – via various friends, travellers, and strangers who will be enlisted as informal couriers for the project.
The project builds on the principles of solidarity, shared struggle, mutual support, and friendship – prerequisites for co-existing with others and key elements in the toolkit for those living “in foreign lands”. The project also points to a wide range of other, broader themes such as alternative logistics, spontaneous production of social relations, informal and gift economies, and the idea of trustfulness.
Commissioner: Ministero della Cultura e dei Media della Repubblica di Croazia
Curator: Antonia Majača
Exhibitor: Vlatka Horvat
Vlatka Horvat: By the Means at Hand / Pavilion of Croatia at Venice Art Biennale 2024. Venice (Italy), April 16, 2024.
Official description: Vlatka Horvat’s project for the Croatian Pavilion – By the Means at Hand – exists as both a dynamic, accumulating exhibition of artworks by a large group of international artists living “as foreigners”, reflecting on questions and urgencies of diasporic experience, and as a compelling, intimate, social, and performative exchange between them. The pavilion also doubles as Horvat’s temporary artist’s studio over the course of the biennial. Horvat has invited a large number of artists living in diaspora in different countries to engage with her in a series of reciprocal exchanges of artworks and other materials, all of which will be sent between Venice and other places by improvised means – via various friends, travellers, and strangers who will be enlisted as informal couriers for the project.
The project builds on the principles of solidarity, shared struggle, mutual support, and friendship – prerequisites for co-existing with others and key elements in the toolkit for those living “in foreign lands”. The project also points to a wide range of other, broader themes such as alternative logistics, spontaneous production of social relations, informal and gift economies, and the idea of trustfulness.
Commissioner: Ministero della Cultura e dei Media della Repubblica di Croazia
Curator: Antonia Majača
Exhibitor: Vlatka Horvat
Vlatka Horvat: By the Means at Hand / Pavilion of Croatia at Venice Art Biennale 2024. Venice (Italy), April 16, 2024.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00 [ Background noise ]
00:20 >> Oh, I love the grape.
00:22 [ Background noise ]
00:51 [ Background noise ]
01:02 >> So we're in the Croatian Pavilion.
01:04 My name is Vlatka Horvat, and this is my project called
01:08 "By the Means at Hand."
01:09 And at the heart of the project is a series of exchanges
01:14 that I've proposed between myself
01:15 and a large number of artist friends.
01:19 So I've invited at this point about 200 artist friends
01:23 to exchange drawings with me, artworks,
01:27 two-dimensional artworks with me.
01:29 And what we all have in common is that we are all foreigners
01:33 in the places where we live.
01:35 And I've asked all the invited artists to in some way reflect
01:40 on this condition of foreignness.
01:43 And the key thing to mention about this exchange is
01:48 that we do not use the postal system.
01:52 We do not use any shipping companies.
01:54 We are realizing this exchange by improvised means,
01:58 by asking friends and friends of friends
02:01 and sometimes even strangers or social media contacts
02:05 to become informal couriers for the project.
02:08 So all the works that are exhibited
02:10 in the exhibition have arrived to Venice in somebody's luggage,
02:16 in somebody's handbag, maybe folded in a book they're reading.
02:21 So far we haven't received anything crumpled in a pocket,
02:25 but perhaps that's one method as well.
02:27 So the project sort of uses these quite informal,
02:32 improvised vernacular transport methods
02:35 and relocates them into this context of the Venice Biennale.
02:39 So all the works have arrived in Venice via these improvised
02:45 vernacular means, if you will.
02:47 And in the form of reciprocal exchange,
02:51 I'm sending back to all the artists who have sent work to me
02:55 one of my works back.
02:57 One of the elements of this project is that I'm in residence
03:01 at the Croatian Pavilion for the duration of the Biennale
03:04 and I'm making work here.
03:06 So all the works that I'm sending back to the artists
03:09 is produced here in the Pavilion.
03:11 So the Pavilion kind of doubles as, on the one hand,
03:15 an exhibition space, on the other hand, as my temporary studio.
03:18 And of course, because a lot of works are,
03:22 well, all the works are being delivered by hand,
03:25 also as a space of meetings, as a space of convergence,
03:28 as a social space.
03:30 So this is the sort of main, I would say,
03:33 exhibition section of the project,
03:35 which on these structures displays on the site
03:39 that we're facing now all the works so far that have arrived.
03:43 Well, not all of them.
03:45 We have more works that have arrived,
03:47 but this is all the works of other artists
03:49 responding to this invitation of mine.
03:52 And on the other side of the structures
03:56 are the work I've been making here.
03:59 And these are collages which in some way
04:02 work and rework photographs of Venice
04:05 that I take on my daily walks throughout the city.
04:09 So there's a kind of, at the heart of it,
04:11 is this attempt at repeatedly looking at the city
04:15 and trying to, on the one hand, really see it,
04:18 and on the other hand, imagine change or transformation.
04:22 So I print these photographs here in the Pavilion
04:25 and I intervene in the image in all kinds of different ways.
04:28 Sometimes I draw on the image,
04:30 sometimes I collage onto it
04:32 or make cuts and reorganize the space of the image.
04:36 And I give myself a kind of a rule
04:39 that whatever change I make to the photograph
04:42 always has to come from what's already there.
04:45 So it's a kind of a process of, on the one hand, close looking,
04:49 and on the other hand, imagining transformation.
04:53 The other part of the exhibition
04:56 is a more archival or library-like setup,
05:01 which is this long table,
05:03 which is a kind of work zone where I'm making these collages.
05:08 And there's a kind of growing archive
05:10 because the exhibition will be changing and accumulating over time
05:14 as new works arrive.
05:16 Or I should say, both accumulating and disintegrating
05:20 because other artists' works are arriving
05:23 and as each one arrives, one of mine leaves.
05:26 So the exhibition is continually both forming and coming undone.
05:32 So this archive, when I've asked the artists to take part in the project,
05:37 I ask them to take a picture of their hands
05:41 as they hand over their work to their courier.
05:44 So the artists send me these images of hands exchanging packages.
05:49 And this image of the hands
05:52 becomes almost the first step in this alternative logistics
05:57 because once we've received the image of the hand,
06:00 it's like an index that the work has started its journey.
06:04 And on these images, we are noting where the work came from,
06:09 who the courier was,
06:11 what its trajectories and movements were.
06:14 So all this kind of stuff,
06:16 which in a more classical exhibition setup remains invisible,
06:20 we are here bringing to the fore.
06:22 So the works on display are as important
06:26 as the stories of the works arriving to Venice.
06:31 So maybe the last two things to mention
06:35 where I'm continuing to kind of map the documentation
06:39 of these performative encounters between the couriers and the artists
06:43 and between people who deliver the works to the pavilion and myself.
06:47 So there's a kind of growing mapping of exchanges on this panel.
06:53 And in this panel, it's the final kind of trace of this process.
06:58 So when the artists receive a work of mine,
07:01 I ask them to very provisionally and temporarily show it somewhere,
07:06 either in their domestic space, in the windshield of their car,
07:10 on the notice board in the neighbourhood,
07:13 sort of a kind of an homage to the history of artists
07:16 staging exhibitions in their houses, in their garages, in their kitchens.
07:20 And it sort of reflects this idea of working with limited means,
07:24 working with limited resources, making do, improvising,
07:28 making things happen,
07:31 in spite of perhaps not having much to work with.
07:34 So the idea of doing a lot with little.
07:37 And I think that, for me, is kind of the core of this project.
07:41 On the one hand, it is about friendship.
07:44 It's about this idea of, let's call it, diaspora solidarity,
07:49 because all the artists live in diasporas,
07:52 from different countries, in different countries.
07:55 And there's this sense of mutual support
07:58 and perhaps a recognition of a shared experience
08:01 that marks this condition of foreignness.
08:04 And on the other hand, it's about these kinds of strategies
08:08 that we develop, especially, I think, migrants and immigrants,
08:12 of making things happen with the help of other people.
08:16 So this project tries to highlight these kinds of networks
08:21 and connections and human kind of readiness to help.
08:28 The idea of trust, the idea of saying, "Yes, we can do this,"
08:33 the idea of accepting an invitation when someone asks you to do something.
08:37 And the idea of community.
08:39 So the works are here in the Croatian Pavilion,
08:42 but they bring together artists from different countries.
08:45 So it's a kind of space of conversation, space of dialogue,
08:49 and a space of temporary sort of coming together.