The International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia returns this year for its 60th edition. While the official programme will galvanise audiences, the collateral shows will equally be rich and fascinating.

Fondation Louis Vuitton will feature French artist Ernest Pignon-Ernest to present Je Est Un Autre, a unique site-specific exhibition presented at the Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia. The exhibition is produced as part of the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s “Hors-les murs” programme, which expanded at the Espaces Louis Vuitton in Tokyo, Munich, Venice, Beijing, Seoul and Osaka in the past.

Since the 1960s, and before the emergence “street art”, Pignon-Ernest pioneered the presentation of artworks in the streets with enigmatic black and white illustrations depicting poets and artists. Producing strong image, his portrait of the French 19th-century poet Arthur Rimbaud even replaced the standard photograph that was previously used of the poet’s works. By strategically combining images and settings, the artist creates meaningful life-size pictures placed in carefully chosen locations. His projects inhabit ordinary environments that evoke a sense of real human presence.

The notion of “the foreigner” has also been an inherent element in Ernest Pignon-Ernest’s work since he began his career in the 1960s. For this exhibition, the artist will continue to explore ideas around vagabonds, itinerants, misfits, and poets.

This incredible new show will feature two new faces, those of major poets, the Russian Anna Akhmatova and the Iranian Forough Farrokhzad, who together with his trademark images of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Arthur Rimbaud, Antonin Artaud, Jean Genet, among others will be at the centre of the exhibition.

For La Biennale, this exhibition will be curated by Suzanne Pagé and Hans Ulrich Obrist, in dialogue with Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. It will be accompanied by a publication bringing together visuals, comments by the artist, “Notes for Ernest” by Dominique Gonzalez- Foerster among other documents. This show will undoubtedly be a highlight of this year’s parallel programme at La Biennale.