2024 has been a year marked by escalating and enduring conflicts all over the world. Undoubtedly, the precarious moment we stand at has left a deep impression on artists, curators and institutions alike, prompting strong responses from a multitude of practices.

As we struggle to make sense of the current historical juncture, our attention is called back to conflicts that have left lasting scars across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, along with wounds that continue to fester across regions.

STIR looks back at seven stories from 2024, which explore art’s role in addressing conflict.

1. Olga de Soto's research documents a revolutionary dance choreography

From February 8 –July 1, 2024, the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid presented Reconstrucción de una danza macabra (Reconstruction of a danse macabre) by Spanish dancer, choreographer and researcher Olga de Soto. The exhibition expanded on an earlier research project by de Soto that focused on German choreographer Kurt Jooss’ (1901 –1979) anti-war ballet Der grüne Tisch (The Green Table, 1932).

The Green Table is a deeply unnerving dance that features masked performers exhibiting faux politeness and a sense of matter-of-factness as they go about performing movements that signal their mutually assured destruction.

While the ballet was developed during the interwar period, de Soto’s research argues that it has transcended its original era and remains just as relevant today as it has ever been.

2. TANK Shanghai’s ‘Parallel Circus’ explores a dark period in Chinese history

TANK Shanghai presented Chinese artist Xun Sun’s solo exhibition Parallel Circus from March 9 –July 14, 2024. The show centred on The Shock Dream in Circus (2024), a new animated short film by Sun that the artist created from a series of oil paintings. Additionally, TANK  displayed the manuscript for the film, along with the large-scale art that makes up the film.

The Shock Dream in Circus is an abstract work that features animals engaging in a soundless dialogue with each other while a nondescript letter repeatedly passes through the film’s frame.

Sun grew up in China in the period following Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966 –1976). The film is inspired by the conversations he had with people who lived through the horrors of that period, many of which are still unacknowledged by the CCCP. The film portrays the world around the artist as a bizarre circus in which its participants are forced to play their roles, either by indoctrination or coercion. The letter, then, can be interpreted as a rosily framed party statement that contradicts the harsh reality it attempts to address.

3. Bulgaria brings disquieting installation art to Venice Art Biennale 2024

The 60th Venice Art Biennale (April 20 –November 24, 2024) considered the movement of human beings as a critical element in shaping today’s geopolitical landscape. The Bulgarian Pavilion’s contribution in Venice was curated by Vasil Vladimirov—curator and director of KO-OP Art Space in Sofia and the founder of the Festival for Illustration and Graphics (FIG)—and presented a haunting multimedia installation that highlighted the memories of survivors of state violence from Bulgaria’s communist era (1945 –1989).

The art installation, titled The Neighbours (2022), is set up as a domestic space where regular household objects are interspersed with those found in indentured labour camps, suggesting that the trauma experienced by the inmates of such camps follows them long after they have been released.

4. Open Group’s ‘Repeat After Me II’ invites audiences to consider the horrors of war

The Polish Pavilion’s contribution to the Venice Biennale 2024 was titled Repeat After Me II (2022) and was curated by art historian, curator and author Marta Czyż.

Repeat After Me II is the second edition of a documentary-style video artwork created by the Ukrainian collective Open Group, and interviews Ukrainian victims of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022 – ongoing). The first edition spoke with displaced civilians in a refugee camp outside Lviv, Ukraine, while the edition shown at the Biennale engaged with refugees scattered across Western Europe.

The interviewees recreate the sounds of weapons used by forces from Russia that destroyed their homes and cities, killed their loved ones and drove them from their nation. They invite the audience to repeat the same sounds, turning the documentary into a macabre karaoke.

5. On colonial pasts and capitalist presents: Tuan Andrew Nguyen at Zeitz MOCAA

Zeitz MOCAA in South Africa is showing The Other Side of Now by Vietnamese-American visual artist Tuấn Andrew Nguyen from August 22, 2024 – July 20, 2025. The exhibition brings together several film and sculptural works by the artist that highlight the lasting legacies of colonialism and how they have shaped family dynamics and personal traumas for people across continents.

The Other Side of Now addresses the largely erased voices of the Vietnamese, Senegalese and Moroccan peoples who were entangled in colonialist warfare in Southeast Asia during the First Indochina War (1946 – 1954) and the Vietnam War (1955 – 1975).

6. Christopher Kulendran Thomas’ art bears the scars of Sri Lanka’s civil war

September of 2024 saw the opening of Christopher Kulendran Thomas: Safe Zone at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels, Belgium, which presented multimedia art by Kulendran Thomas, an artist of Tamil descent with roots in Sri Lanka.

The painting work and video art shown at WIELS explores the legacy of Western imperialism in the island nation in South Asia and its role in fuelling the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983 – 2009). Particularly, Kulendran Thomas presented disturbing paintings envisioning the Mullivaikkal Massacre, which is one of the darkest moments in 21st-century Sri Lankan history and has gone largely unreported in the international press.

Safe Zone is on view from September 07, 2024 – January 05, 2025.

7. Maryam Yousif’s ‘Riverbend’ challenges Western perceptions of Iraq

The Institute for Contemporary Art San Francisco (ICASF) is showing Riverbend by Iraqi artist Maryam Yousif from October 25, 2024 – February 23, 2025. The show brought together a series of sculptures by Yousif that have been inspired by the work of Iraqi modernist Jewad Selim (1919 – 1961) and the writings of anonymous Iraqi blogger Riverbend, who was active from 2003 – 2007 and documented her nation during the Iraq War (2003 – 2011).

Like Riverbend’s writings, Yousif’s sculptural art gives audiences a very different perspective on the Middle Eastern nation than what has been portrayed in American media. It tells the story of resilient people who are the custodians of a rich heritage and have been misrepresented to justify an illegal occupation.

This was our best of 2024 roundup, from the many compelling stories on creative expression emerging from war and conflict that STIR covered in 2024.

STIRred 2024 wraps up the year with curated compilations of our expansive art, architecture and design coverage at STIR this year. Did your favourites make the list? Tell us in the comments!