Biennale 2024 Venezia (Arsenale

In 2019, Erick Meyenberg, a Mexican artist of German and Lebanese descent, gathered the Doda family around a table in the Italian countryside. The family had migrated to Italy over thirty years earlier from Albania, integrating without losing their cultural ties and traditions, and giving rise to another identity: that of the foreigner. A condition that carries intrinsic the pain of loss and the constant and irremediable return to the memory of what will never be again. The artist bears witness to the evolution of personal habits, both acquired and left behind: ways of honouring, loving, and missing that are universal in their singularities.
It is from that record and constant dialogue with Gentian Doda that this installation emerges four years later.
At the centre of the Mexican Pavilion we find a table, framed by pairs of corner screens showing the family gathered around that other table. The setting poetically evokes the displacement of the migrant and, at the same time, the rootedness that a shared lunch can represent. When “the land”, our place of origin or upbringing, is far away or becomes an impossibility, food and music become bearers and creators of belonging, transcending the physical and symbolic boundaries outlined by humans.
Commissioner: Ana Catalina Valenzuela González
Curator: Tania Ragasol
Exhibitor: Erick Meyenberg
Venue: Arsenale