A year in art: Adriano Pedrosa at the Venice Biennale, Personal Structures, Refik Anadol's AI work, Yinka Shonibare and Julie Mehretu BMW Art Car.
Outside the Brazilian Pavilion at the 60th la Biennale di Venezia Nargess Banks
What an extraordinary year for the arts. Reflecting on it, there are countless threads to unravel, yet what stands out most is how the year unfolded as a less linear story of art—one with a willingness to embrace diverse narratives and alternative stories and realities. In doing so, it revealed a rich tapestry of pluralistic art histories, and with so much to discover.
Foreigners Everywhere/Stranieri Ovunque perfectly captured this spirit. Curated by Brazilian artist Adriano Pedrosa, the main art exhibition of the 60th la Biennale di Venezia seemed to divide opinion—loved and loathed in equal measure. For me, though, it was a treasure trove of ideas, introducing artists past and present with whom I had little or no prior connection.
Pedrosa bravely took on the realities of movement and migration, of diasporic experiences; real or imagined concepts of émigré and exile, refugees and nomad, forgotten and unheard voices, lost cultures, destroyed cultures. And it was energising walking through the Arsenale and Giardini and discovering all these voices in the arts who would otherwise be lost to us. Together with Personal Structures, which runs parallel to the Venice Biennale, it opened up an entire ocean of art and ideas.
Claire Fontaine, Foreigners Everywhere/Stranieri Ovunque at Arsenale, Venice Biennale Leigh Banks
The latter was a new discovery for me. Founded in 2002 by artist René Rietmeyer, Personal Structures is an open platform for artists to exhibit and share their work and ideas. The concept emerged as a response to non-subjective art, proposing instead that all art intrinsically carries a part of the artist’s consciousness, making it inherently personal. As Sara Danieli, head of art at the European Cultural Centre (the independent organization behind the exhibition) explained, “We conceive the exhibition as a platform that values the diversity of artistic approaches and expressions, with the intention of documenting plurality.”
Maisara Baroud "I'm Still Alive" at Foreigners in their Homeland for Personal Structures 2024 Federico Vespignani/Personal Structures
Exhibiting to the theme Beyond Boundaries, the majestic Venetian palazzos Bembo and Mora, along with Marinaressa Gardens, hosted a dynamic group exhibition featuring over 200 artists from 51 countries, and with contributions from art and academic institutions. Together, they wove a rich tapestry of perspectives on the pressing challenges of our time, exploring themes ranging from culture and gender identity to politics, existence and climate urgency (see the highlights here).
Other group exhibitions in 2024 offering alternative art historical narratives included the absolutely brilliant Harlem Renaissance at the Met in New York. The show truly captured the vibrant cultural, artistic and intellectual movement of 1920s and 1930s Harlem while uncovering its threads of connection to European art and thought. It certainly was one of my year’s highlights.
Gieve Patel, Two Men with Handcart, 1979 at The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975- 1998 © Gieve Patel Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum Photography by Barbara Kennedy Gieve Patel. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum Photography by Barbara Kennedy
Meanwhile in London, The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975–1998 at the Barbican explored the time between two pivotal moments in India’s history: Indira Gandhi’s declaration of a state of emergency in 1975 and the Pokhran nuclear tests in 1998. Featuring work by 30 artists, the exhibition conveyed stories of social upheaval, economic collapse, and the complexities of rapid urbanization. It took me a second visit to the Barbican to fully appreciate the show, but as with Venice, the exhibition opened up a whole other world of artists to explore.
There were plenty of solo shows too which also invited a wider lens to the story of art. In Suspended States at Serpentine, British Nigerian artist’s Yinka Shonibare continued his quest to examine contemporary culture and national identities through western art history and literature. As an artist I much admire, it was an exhibition I revisited numerous times on my walks through Hyde Park, on each visit finding something new to survey.
Meanwhile, at the Barbican Curve gallery, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum’s It Will End in Tears took on some hard-hitting subjects—migration, belonging, hybrid identities—delicately told through the artist’s theatrical, imaginative sets featuring a femme fatale film noir character living in a made-up colonial outpost. Audiences were invited to navigate a series of life-size dioramas and paintings, immersing themselves in a thought-provoking exploration of complex human experiences.
Yinka Shonibare: Suspended States Serpentine South Gallery, London 2024 Jo Underhill/Serpentine
Unsurprisingly, this past year saw many artists immerse themselves in the world of AI, investigating how machine intelligence can be shaped and expressed through their lens. As Hans Ulrich Obrist, the Serpentine gallery’s artistic director, aptly noted, “Artists have the power to make the invisible visible.” Two of the gallery’s shows certainly challenged my own biases and binary thinking about the future.
Take Los Angeles-based Turkish artist Refik Anadol, for instance. A pioneer in the aesthetics of machine intelligence, through data visualization he creates these incredible sensory and otherworldly artworks. Anadol views AI as a force for positive change. If thoughtfully guided, he believes AI can enhance creativity, improve well-being, assist education, shape better-built environments and even help restore nature.
Refik Anadol, Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive, 2024. Installation view, Serpentine North Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Refik Anadol Studio and Serpentine.
What’s more, Anadol sees nature as the key to unlocking AI’s potential. Even though he is aware that AI is so energy intensive, his argument is that nature does offer the purest, most unbiased data source. To demonstrate, at the heart of his Serpentine exhibition earlier in the year was Artificial Realities: Rainforest, a generative AI visualization powered by Anadol’s Large Nature Model—an open-source AI model the artist is developing to gather data from the natural world.
“I want the artwork to demystify AI,” Anadol told me as we stood surrounded by his immersive makeshift rainforest. “I want to create something fresh that shakes our perspective.” (See the review here).
Also at Serpentine, in an exhibition that is running until February, two of the most influential artists and musicians working in AI, Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, have imagined the art institution as a laboratory for artist-led AI systems. A collaboration with Serpentine Arts Technologies, The Call draws on the rituals of community musical groups—particularly choir singing—to explore how humans and machines can co-create. At its heart is the creation of new vocal datasets, polyphonic AI models capable of blending human and machine voices, pulling audiences into an immersive, participatory experience.
The Call, Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst Serpentine, 2024 Leon Chew/Serpentine
Much like Anadol, for Herndon and Dryhurst, AI is a creative instrument to be nurtured and trained thoughtfully. Their work challenges the idea of AI as a replacement for artists, instead advocating for collaboration to shape AI as a partner in the creative process. Drawing parallels between AI training and the rituals of choir groups—call-and-response, camaraderie, collective meaning—they propose a vision where the warmth and connection of human communities could guide AI down a more collaborative and ethical path (see the review here).
The year gone also saw some fantastic exhibitions of art history’s masters and makers. At 90, South African artist Esther Mahlangu got her first true retrospective Then I knew I was good at painting at the Iziko Museum in Cape Town. Brâncuși at the Centre Pompidou in Paris paid tribute to the father of modern sculpture Constantin Brâncuși, and happened to be the most beautifully imagined exhibition I’ve ever seen. While Willem de Kooning and Italy at Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice perfectly captured the significance in the American artist’s Italian episode from 1959 and 1969 for what was another gem of an exhibition.
There is much more to reflect upon, but I’ll close my year-end review with Julie Mehretu’s BMW Art Car (see the interview with the artist here). As anyone familiar with my work knows, I have a soft spot for the motor car, and what could be more seductive than a project that boldly celebrates both speed and contemporary art?
Julie Mehretu BMW Art Car #20
What began as an innocent venture in 1975, the BMW Art Car project has evolved into a showcase of the most renowned names in art history (Calder, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Koons, Hockney…) each artist leaving a unique imprint on these racecars. These cars tell the story of shifts in car design, in racing culture, in our changing relationship with the motor car itself, and they reflect on contemporary art. What’s not to like!
Mehretu’s BMW Art Car #20 is a truly striking addition to this legacy. The celebrated American artist reimagined the M Hybrid V8, transforming the racecar into a dynamic work of art that competed, though sadly didn’t win, in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The car’s abstract visual forms, digitally altered photographs from Mehretu’s monumental painting Everywhen (2021/23), are layered with dot grids, neon veils, and black markings.
While Everywhen may have been the starting point, Mehretu allowed the Art Car to find its own language throughout the creation process, the race, and the passage of time. Proposed in the early days of the pandemic, when the world was in lockdown, she saw the project as a metaphorical portal into the future. Mehretu speaks of her Art Car as if it were racing through the painting, absorbing its energy, with the blur and glitch symbolizing both movement and speed.
As Mehretu remarked about the Art Car: “What could be more radically insane than a car that is hovering at speed off the ground? The whole project is about invention, imagination, and pushing the limits of what’s possible.”
Julie Mehretu signing her BMW Art Car #20 Nargess Banks
The South African artist William Kentridge (who was also present at the Venice Biennale with a wonderful solo show Self-portrait as a Coffee Pot) once said art is there to give a sense of agency in the world—for the artist and the viewer. What struck so much in 2024 was the sheer global aspect of the arts exhibited—this welcoming of a wider range of both artist and art. The conversations we saw happening across galleries, institutions and art fairs are proof that art can be a powerful platform for individuals and communities to express themselves, that art must be maintained as a safe space for questioning everything and not be used for political motives. Mostly, what 2024 showed so well is that art and artists can help shape social and cultural conversations.
And as we move into 2025, it’s essential that these dialogues continue to evolve, push boundaries, challenge our linear art history education, inspire and excite new ways for art to influence and transform our world.
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