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

Vlatka Horvat: By the Means at Hand / Pavilion of Croatia at Venice Art Biennale 2024. Venice (Italy), April 16, 2024.

— Right-click (Mac: ctrl-click) this link to download Quicktime video file.