Working across an eclectic range of media – such as sculpture, installation, drawing, performance, photography, video and writing – the London-based artist Vlatka Horvat previously represented Croatia at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018 with her work To Still the Eye, as part of the collective art exhibition Cloud Pergola: The Architecture of Hospitality. On the occasion of this year’s Croatian Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale, curated by the art historian Antonia Majača, Horvat presents her new project By The Means at Hand, which is characterised by a distinctly participatory dimension. After having an experience of migration when she moved to the United States as a teenager, Horvat decided to involve a wide group of international artists in her presentation, all of whom are united by the diasporic condition.

The title of the project comes from Horvat’s improvised approach of transporting the works to Venice, activated through informal networks of friends, acquaintances and strangers. In the role of unofficial couriers, individuals have been collecting, carrying across borders and delivering by hand – in the form of parcels, envelopes and tubes – the simple drawings made by the artists who have been invited to participate. This method reflects the ways in which people living outside their countries of origin often transport treasured items back home. Due to the performative nature of the project, the Croatian Pavilion – which is currently welcomed by the spaces of Fàbrica 33, in the vibrant neighbourhood of Cannaregio – will grow over time as more works are delivered by hand. The space becomes the focus of a mutual exchange of artworks and other materials between Horvat and the collaborating artists, enhancing the values of solidarity and trust. This exhibition – which relates to the Venice Art Biennale director Adriano Pedrosa’s theme Foreigners Everywhere – is an opportunity to reflect not only on the effects of displacement but also on the environmental impact of the most institutionalised modes of production, transportation and presentation in the contemporary art world.

Horvat is in residence onsite at the Croatia Pavilion during the Venice Art Biennale, creating collages in response to the drawings she receives over time which she will then send back through the same hand-delivery networks. The landscape of Venice is the starting point for Horvat’s collages. The city-as-subject (particularly Venice) has continued to have uninterrupted popularity in international imagery from at least the 18th century, when the pictorial genre known as Vedutismo (Vedutism) flourished. Nevertheless, Horvat reinterprets the theme with sensitivity, drawing on details that might otherwise seem trite. A significant example is the sotopòrtego (under pòrtego), one of the most characteristic architectural elements of the Venetian tradition: a passageway that runs under a building, connecting calli (streets), campi (squares) and canals to each other. By its nature, the sotopòrtego can perform different functions, from shortening walking times when one is in a hurry, to refreshing people with its shade during the notoriously humid summers of the Venetian lagoon. When one looks at it through the lens of Horvat’s collages, the sotopòrtego soon reveals metaphorical values: indicating the passage from light to darkness and back, as well as the movement from one place to another, perhaps symbolising the experience of foreigners, especially that of refugees and exiles.

This exhibition...is an opportunity to reflect not only on the effects of displacement but also on the environmental impact of the most institutionalised modes of production, transportation and presentation in the contemporary art world.

The artist’s choice of collage is also particularly pertinent to the concept of displacement. Juxtaposing different iconographic materials means reinventing what is already known to create a new dimension, perhaps fairer than the actual reality. In fact, collage can lead to imaginative geographies that converge the boundaries between the individual and collective, as well as between the local and universal. The style of Horvat’s collages is reminiscent of the illustrations by the Italian painter and graphic designer Leo Lionni (1910-1999), who was forced to leave his country for the United States in 1939 because of the racial laws against the Italian Jews. Author of some of the most innovative children’s books of the 20th century, such as Little Blue and Little Yellow (1959), Lionni used a similar approach to geometry and texture, bringing to life existential topics through a graphic identity that is still highly evocative in its simplicity.

The affinity between paper collage and fabric patchwork in Horvat’s work also relates to the American tradition of patchworks and quilts from the late 19th century. Examples include the crazy patchworks or, even more significantly, the silk cigar ribbon quilts, mentioned by the British curator Patrick Elliott in the exhibition catalogue of Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 2019), which all tend towards the construction of imaginative geographies; an escape from daily life in form of cutouts stitched together.

In his famous essay Watermark (1992), the Russian poet Iosif Alexandrovich Brodskji wrote that during the Venetian winter, he noticed the same smell of seaweed that he had inhaled as a child on the Baltic Sea. The words of the exiled poet remind us, once again, how Venice, despite its uniqueness, is a place where everyone can recognise themselves: a place to reach and from which to depart, as By The Means at Hand promises to do.

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.