The use of sound has been a recurring feature at this year’s 60^th Venice Biennale curated by Adriano Pedrosa. While there wasn’t a trend for traditional "sound art," many artists incorporated sound and music into their national pavilions' exhibitions in a variety of ways.

For many, it was a way to tell stories. Poland and Panama featured migrant voices, while Wael Shawky's musical for Egypt told the story of the 19^th century nationalist Urabi revolution. The Nordic Countries presented an opera based on historical tales. Visitors to Eva Koťátková’s The heart of a giraffe in captivity is twelve kilos lighter for the Czech Republic were invited to crawl through a padded giraffe neck while listening to stories about the titular giraffe told by members of children’s and seniors’ collectives with whom the artist worked.

Others used music and sound to explore aspects of their culture that have previously been underrepresented, such as the video in the final room of the US pavilion. Created by the artist Jeffrey Gibson, it featured the artist and dancer Sarah Ortegon HighWalking performing the Jingle Dress Dance—a powwow dance that originated with the Ojibwe tribe. Traditionally performed by women, the centuries-old dance calls upon ancestors for strength, protection, and healing. Likewise, Manal AlDowayan’s art exhibition featured the voices of women and girls from Saudi Arabia.

While it’s impossible to include every pavilion that has integrated sound (including the UK, France, Switzerland and many more), STIR has picked out a selection of countries with particularly memorable acoustic presentations.

Poland

The Polish pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024 uses sound in the most memorable and poignant way. The set-up is simple—large video screens on the two opposing walls of the rectangular space with a row of microphones in front of each screen and seating for visitors in the middle. This is a karaoke room, but as you soon discover, it isn’t a style of karaoke you would have experienced before. Repeat After Me II was created by the Ukrainian Open Group collective. The two videos feature Ukrainian refugees recreating the sounds of warfare—from machine gun fire to missiles—and the sounds the participants make are written phonetically as subtitles, such as "TRRRRRRRRRR VShchlukh". The people in the video then invite visitors to “repeat after me” and the “lyrics” of these sounds are illuminated at the bottom of the screen in time to their audio, just like a karaoke video. It was a fitting choice for Poland, which has housed so many Ukrainians since the Russian invasion began. And it showed, sadly, that while we may all speak different languages, the sounds of war are universally understandable.

Hungary

The techno music scene serves as the inspiration for Márton Nemes’ installation Techno Zen. The central room is painted pink, while the surrounding rooms feature a riot of abstract colourful works, with bright shiny surfaces overlaying matt layers. His graffiti-like application of paint swirls shades together in a psychedelic fashion. While the colour palette of the artworks, walls and lighting within the pavilion are reminiscent of the experience of being in a nightclub, Nemes also presents another interpretation of the term techno – that of “technology”. He uses materials such as laser-cut steel and fans and achieves a high-gloss finish on the artwork thanks to car paint. The music's volume within the space also rises and falls, further strengthening the evocation of being in a club.

Nordic Countries

The Swedish artist Lap-See Lam, Finnish artist Kholod Hawash and Norwegian composer Tze Yeung Ho have collaborated to produce The Altersea Opera. The pavilion is designed as a dragon ship with a dragon’s head and tail at either end (which was salvaged from a floating restaurant). Inside the pavilion is a maze-like construction of bamboo scaffolding, interspersed with textile works by Hawash and screens showing the video of the opera. Inspired by the Red Boat Opera Company—a travelling troupe that popularised Cantonese opera in the 19^th century—the piece centred on the story of Lo Ting, half-fish, half-man, a figure from Hong Kong mythology. Through his libretto, he describes his longing to return home, but when he does, he no longer recognises the place that has changed in his absence.

Panama

Traces: on the Body and on the Land features four Panamanian artists—Brooke Alfaro, Isabel De Obaldía, Cisco Merel and Giana De Dier—whose work looks at migration through the Darien Gap in Panama. This tropical jungle lies between Panama and Colombia and is the only land route connecting South America to Central America and is traversed each year by more than 500,000 people from all over the world who hope to reach the United States. De Obaldía’s work is exhibited in its own room—her figurative glass sculptures are hung among floor-to-ceiling drawings of the jungle. But the most captivating element is the soundscape playing in the space, created from recordings that the artist made in the area. Not only does it feature sounds from the environment such as the rivers and native bird songs, but visitors can also hear extracts from stories told by the migrants themselves.

Italy

Even the title of Massimo Bartolini’s installation plays with sound. Due qui / To Hear is a homophone: “Due qui” translates from Italian to English as “two here”, which sounds the same as “to hear”. Visitors are invited to use their ears as well as their eyes as they navigate the exhibition, in which Bartolini collaborates with fellow artists and musicians Caterina Barbieri, Gavin Bryars and Kali Malone. In the first room, a long tube with a tiny figure of a Bodhisattva perched on one end bisects the space. A fan blows air through the rectangular tube to produce a low hum. This minimalistic presentation contrasts with the next room, which is filled with scaffolding poles. These act as an organ, playing an electronic composition by Barbieri and Malone. Outside the pavilion in the gardens, a choral work produced by Bryars and his son Yuri plays among the trees.

Saudi Arabia

Manal AlDowayan has devised an immersive installation for her exhibition Shifting Sands: A Battle Song. What at first appear to be slices of wood mounted throughout the length of the narrow pavilion are in fact silk panels, taking their forms from the crystal clusters known as desert roses. These are printed with drawings and texts from Saudi women. As you wander through the space, you hear the sounds generated by the shifting sands of the local dunes, overlaid with Saudi women and girls humming and harmonising with these recordings, which AlDowayan recorded during the participatory workshops she organised in Al Khobar, Riyadh and Jeddah. The work encourages us to reflect on how things are changing for Saudi women while considering the country’s environment.

Luxembourg

Unlike most pavilions which showcase a 'finished work,' A Comparative Dialogue Act—devised by artist and musician Andrea Mancini and multidisciplinary collective Every Island—is a constantly evolving presentation. Ahead of the opening of the Biennale, four guest artists contributed to a “sound library” which they use as a basis for the work that they perform in the space during their assigned week. During the preview and opening days of the biennale, visitors witnessed performances by the guest artist Selin Davasse. French artist Célin Jiang's residency takes place in June, Stina Fors from Vienna will appear in July and Bella Báguena is performing in September. The pavilion itself is a simple set, bordered by grey curtains, with four glass “sound walls” on the stage, which the artists can move during their performances.

Serbia

The artist Aleksandar Denic’s Exposition Coloniale draws heavily from his experience as a stage and film set designer. Reminiscent of a Punchdrunk theatre set, the pavilion is filled with an assortment of individual rooms that visitors can enter and explore, from photo booths, shops and food stand to toilets, bedrooms and even a sauna. Set in the past, but at an undetermined time, the various spaces suggest aspirations towards cultural markers of “the West”. The toilet is wallpapered with Louis Vuitton logos, the shop contains a jukebox that only has songs containing the word Europe—such as Roxy Music’s A Song for Europe (1973) or Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express (1977)—and another room has a TV screen playing the classic Coca-Cola advert I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (1971) on an endless loop.

The mandate of the 60th Venice Biennale, which aims to highlight under-represented artists and art histories, aligns with the STIR philosophy of challenging the status quo and presenting powerful perspectives. Explore our series on the Biennale, STIRring 'Everywhere' in Venice, which brings you a curated selection of the burgeoning creative activity in the historic city of Venice, in a range of textual and audiovisual formats.