The World Belongs to You

The international art scene is no longer organised around a single centre, with a small number of creative focal points (from the American West Coast to the Far East, through Africa, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union countries). On the opposite, it is now characterised by proliferation, multiplicity, movement and nomadism. These are precisely the themes of the exhibition “The World Belongs to You”, curated by Caroline Bourgeois at Palazzo Grassi. The curator aimed to juxtapose works by artists of different generations and origins, to compare different artistic practices, disciplines, personal backgrounds, and to explore the artists’ relationships to history, reality and its representation.

The 40 artists of the exhibition come from all over the world – from China to South Africa, from France to Japan, from Italy to Iraq, from the United States to Russia – and present personal points of view on the major changes in the world and on the hope they generate.

“The World Belongs to You” is built around the major questions of contemporary history: from the disintegration of symbols to the temptation of isolation, to the fascination with violence and spirituality, in a tormented and globalised world. All this leads back to the question of identity that is based not on a nationality or on the assertion of an origin, but on how to built a relationship with others.