The 2024 Venice Biennale has unfolded as a vivid testament to the collective psyche of our times, with climate anxiety emerging as its unmistakable leitmotif. Across pavilions and installations, artists and curators have woven a tapestry of dread, urgency, and fragile hope, mirroring humanity’s fraught relationship with a planet in peril. This year’s edition, more than any before, feels less like an art exhibition and more like a global cry for reckoning—one where aesthetics and activism blur into a single, desperate question: How do we go on?

Walking through the Arsenale or the Giardini, the air is thick with unease. The works on display are not merely objects to be admired but visceral experiences that unsettle. Olafur Eliasson’s haunting installation of melting glacial ice, for instance, is no longer just a commentary on rising temperatures; it’s a memento mori for ecosystems already lost. Nearby, a video piece by the collective Superflux traps viewers in a loop of apocalyptic wildfires and vanishing coastlines, their soundscapes a cacophony of sirens and cracking earth. These are not passive observations—they’re confrontations. The Biennale, in its 60th iteration, has become a stage for what philosopher Timothy Morton calls “hyperobjects”: phenomena like climate change so vast and pervasive that they defy traditional representation, yet demand to be felt.

Critics have noted how this year’s theme, “Foreigners Everywhere,” takes on a double meaning. While it ostensibly addresses migration and displacement, the subtext is planetary. As rising seas and droughts redraw maps, we are all becoming foreigners—to the Earth we once knew. The Brazilian pavilion’s dystopian garden, where genetically modified plants wilt under artificial light, speaks to this alienation. So does the Nordic pavilion’s eerie sound installation, which merges Sami joiks with the groans of melting permafrost. The effect is a chorus of loss, a reminder that climate anxiety isn’t abstract; it’s the sound of cultures and species singing their swan songs.

Yet, amid the gloom, there are pockets of defiance. The Ghanaian pavilion’s sprawling textile piece, woven from recycled plastics, pulses with vibrant color—a celebration of resilience in the face of waste. The Dutch contribution, a series of AI-generated landscapes, imagines futures where nature and technology coexist uneasily but creatively. These works don’t offer solutions so much as they insist on the necessity of imagination. As curator Adrienne Edwards remarked in a panel discussion, “Art doesn’t fix the world, but it can fracture our complacency.” That fracture, she argues, is where change begins.

The political undertones are impossible to ignore. Several pavilions have openly critiqued the inertia of global powers, with the German installation featuring a mock UN summit where delegates debate endlessly as water rises around their podiums. It’s a biting satire of bureaucratic paralysis, but also a mirror: How different is this from the real-world delays in climate action? Meanwhile, the Pacific Islands pavilion—a coalition of small nations disproportionately affected by climate change—has turned its space into a memorial for drowned atolls, complete with ancestral artifacts submerged in glass tanks. Their message is clear: For some, anxiety has already given way to grief.

What makes this Biennale particularly arresting is its refusal to cater to escapism. Even the more abstract works, like the Japanese pavilion’s labyrinth of mirrored screens reflecting fragmented forests, force viewers to confront their own complicity. There’s no pristine nature here, only distortions—a metaphor for how human intervention has altered every inch of the planet. Similarly, the Canadian contribution, a series of charred timber sculptures, invites touch, ensuring visitors leave with soot on their hands. The tactile reminder is deliberate: Climate change isn’t something to observe; it’s something we’re already stained by.

By the time one reaches the central pavilion, the cumulative weight is overwhelming. The final room, dedicated to participatory art, offers a single question on a blank wall: “What will you do?” The answers, scribbled by visitors in dozens of languages, range from despair to determination. This, perhaps, is the Biennale’s ultimate provocation. Climate anxiety isn’t just a theme to be displayed; it’s a catalyst. Whether it sparks action or resignation, however, remains the unanswered question hanging over Venice—and the world beyond.