visit venice biennale 2022

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Manage Your Subscription
• Give a Gift Subscription
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes
• Culture + Design
• Visual Arts

Venice Biennale Is Filling the City With Stunning Art Through November — Here's What to See

After a pandemic pause, the 59th Biennale Arte is in full swing and runs until Nov. 27, 2022.

It took 879 days for Venice's Biennale Arte to return. In other words, art purgatory. Since its 1895 debut, Venice has feted the world every two years (the odd-numbered years) with a six-month-long contemporary art fest. Due to a pandemic pause, the programmed 2021 Biennale was taken off the calendar, interrupting a long-standing tradition.

But in April 2022, the Biennale returned. To be honest, I was a little nervous when I arrived at Stazione Santa Lucia to attend the Biennale press preview. I've been a Biennale habitué since 1999. Over two decades, I've watched the Biennale evolve from a charming art opening to a solar system of events across the magnificent floating city where the who's who of art, fashion, and finance flex the latest styles.

It didn't take long for my fears to evaporate. As I got off the train, impeccably fashion-forward travelers were greeted by stewards holding up signs with the words "Chanel" and "Valentino." I thought I caught a glimpse of an artist I knew and definitely bumped into Giovanna Melandri, president of MAXXI , Rome's gorgeous Zaha Hadid-designed contemporary art museum. Five minutes after I posted my first "baby, I'm back" selfie, my hairdresser messaged me to meet at the Bauer hotel, where she was coiffing Chanel VIPs. And as I headed over to grab a spritz with her, it hit me: The Biennale was back in full force.

The Venice Biennale is more than just an art show — it's a celebration. Art is everywhere; in palazzi, museums, shops, gardens, and on boats. Here's what you need to know about visiting the city-wide event this year, which runs until Nov. 27, 2022.

The official Biennale Arte occupies two areas of Venice: the Giardini, a vast green space in the city's Castello neighborhood that's played host to the Biennale since its inception, and the Arsenale, a centuries-old shipyard hosting myriad national pavilions filled with artwork and this year's flagship exhibition.

The theme this year is "Il Latte dei Sogni" ("The Milk of Dreams"), a massive multi-artist exhibition and visual, fantastical journey curated by Cecilia Alemani and located in the Giardini's central pavilion and Arsenale's Corderie. This year, the headlining exhibit features 90% female artists from more than 100 countries. Each piece within the expansive exhibition, which launched on the first day of the festival in April, has a different vibe, illustrating a rainbow of emotions from anxiety and anger to joy and nostalgia.

I spent two full days at the Giardini and Arsenale. Downtime meant wandering the Collateral Events (external exhibitions organized by galleries and institutions like Palazzo Grassi, Fondazione Prada, and Venice's museum network MUVE). I queued lines with artists, photographers, journalists, collectors, and the entire curation team from Denmark's Trapholt museum. I ventured to Piazza San Marco to see four monumental floor-to-ceiling paintings by Anselm Kiefer and onto the gorgeous Isola di San Giorgio.

How much time should visitors dedicate to the Biennale? The answer is simple: as much time as you like. Realistically, you can visit the Giardini and Arsenale over the course of one day, but I personally prefer splitting the visits over two days. Conveniently, a single-entry ticket to the Biennale offers access to both the Giardini area and the Arsenale, but each site can be visited on different and nonconsecutive days.

Be on the lookout for the following art exhibits when you visit the Biennale this year.

At the Giardini

• At the Great Britain pavilion: "Feeling Her Way," by Sonia Boyce
• At the United States pavilion: "Sovereignty," by Simone Leigh
• At the Poland pavilion: "Re-enchanting the World," by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas
• At the Greece pavilion: "Oedipus in Search of Colonus," a VR experience by Loukia Alavanou
• At the France pavilion: "Dreams Have No Titles," by Zineb Sedira
• Central Pavilion for "The Milk of Dreams"

At the Arsenale

• "Of Whales," a large outdoor video by Wu Tsang
• At the Italy pavilion: "Storia della Notte e Destino delle Comete," by Gian Maria Tosatti
• Malta: Arcangelo Sassolino, Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci, Brian Schembri
• At the New Zealand pavilion: "Paradise Camp," by Yuki Kihara
• At the Ukraine pavilion: "Fountain of Exhaustion," by Pavlo Makov
• At the Corderie: Take a gorgeous walk from Golden Lion winner Simone Leigh's colossal bronze sculpture to Precious Okoyomon's installation of "To See the Earth Before the End of the World." Be on the lookout for Sandra Mujinga's "Sentinels of Change" and Delcy Morelos' "Earthly Paradise."

Related Articles

Everything you need to know about the Venice Biennale

The venice biennale.

Are you looking for a quick introduction to the worldwide famous Venice Biennale, or Biennale di Venezia, and some information to best enjoy it?

You’re in the right place!

What is the Venice Biennale?

The expression “Venice Biennale” is used mainly to describe a large-scale international contemporary art exhibition in Venice.

Until recently, the name “Venice Biennale” was used to refer both to an organization based in Venice and to its international biennial exhibition of contemporary visual arts.

To avoid confusion, in 2009 the organization changed its name to “Biennale Foundation” and the exhibition’s name to “Art Biennale”, Biennale d’Arte in Italian.

Today, the Biennale Foundation organizes:

• The Art Biennale
• The Architecture Biennale
• The Cinema Biennale
• The Dance Biennale
• The Music Biennale
• The Theatre Biennale.

The three most famous exhibitions of the Venice Biennale are the Art Biennale, the Architecture Biennale (since 1980), and the Biennale Cinema (since 1932).

Of course, the Biennale Foundation has also a beautiful website with everything related to the Foundation’s initiatives

Why is the Venice Biennale so famous?

The Venice Biennale is famous worldwide because it was the first Biennale.

All other biennial exhibitions in the world have been modelled on the Venice Biennale.

Still today, the Venice Biennale is widely considered the most prestigious Biennale exhibition in the world.

How many people visit Venice Biennale every year?

Lately, each year, over 500,000 visitors have come to visit the Venice Biennale.

Want more tips, tools and stories from Venice, Italy?

We're on a mission to make it easy and fun to discover and support the authentic Venice. Try our email and see for yourself!

Thanks for signing up! If there is no e-mail in your inbox in the next hour, remember to check your spam folder and to add us to your contact list. Thank you! Get access to our live videos and even more content: like us on Facebook to add daily goodness to your feed. A presto!

Oops! We're sorry, something went wrong. We'll fix it soon. In the mean time, you can like us on Facebook to stay in touch!

By signing up you agree with Venezia Autentica's privacy policy

Useful Information for the Venice Biennale (dates, duration, costs, etc...)

On which year is the venice biennale.

Despite the name Biennale, which in Italian means biennial, only the Art Biennale and the Architecture Biennale are held every two years. The Venice Film Festival, the Theatre Biennale, the Music Biennale, and the Dance Biennale are held every year.

Until 2019:

• The Art Biennale in Venice used to take place in odd years (…, 2015, 2017, 2019, …)
• The Architecture Biennale in Venice used to be held in even years (…, 2014, 2016, 2018, …)

After the Covid-19 pandemic struck and forced exhibitions to halted temporarily:

• The Art Biennale in Venice will take place in even years (2022, 2024, …)
• The Architecture Biennale will be held in uneven years (2021, 2023, …)

Unlock a discount at the best local businesses in Venice

How long does the venice biennale last.

The Art Biennale and the Architecture Biennale in Venice are the two exhibitions which last the longest: over 6 months! The Venice Film Festival, the Theatre Biennale, the Music Biennale, and the Dance Biennale last from 10 days to 2 weeks.

When is the Venice Biennale?

The dates of the Art and the Architecture Biennale in Venice can change every year. In general, the Art or Architecture Biennale start in May and end at the end of November.

Similarly to these leading evens, the dates of the other Biennale in Venice can vary from year to year.

The Dance Biennale usually starts in the last week of June and ends the first days of July. It is then ‘followed’ by the Theatre Biennale which tends to begin the last week of July and ends the second week of August.

The world famous Venice Film Festival, on its hand, typically starts in the last days of August and ends the second week of September.

The last of these “yearly Biennale” is the Music Biennale which starts the last days of September and ends the second week of October.

When is the best moment to come see the Venice Biennale?

Since the Architecture and Art Biennale in Venice last over 6 months, it is possible to carefully plan when to come to Venice and check out the exhibition.

If you’re flexible and can decide when to travel, we would recommend coming either before mid-June or after mid-September. In fact, between June and August the temperatures in Venice tend to be high, the days very humid, and the city to be very crowded.

On the contrary, before mid-June, and after mid-September Venice is not as crowded and the days are not as hot and humid, making it possible to enjoy both the Venice Biennale and Venice much more!

What are the opening days and hours of the Venice Biennale?

Opening Days: The Venice Biennale is CLOSED on Mondays. In 2022, however, it will be OPEN also on 9 Mondays:

• 25th of April
• 30th of May
• 27th of June
• 25th of July
• 15th of August
• 5th of September
• 19th of September
• 31st of October
• 21st of November

Opening Hours: The Giardini area and the Arsenale area are both open from 10 AM to 6 PM

How much does a ticket for the Venice Biennale cost?

The cost for a one-entry ticket for the Art or the Architecture Biennale in Venice is 25,50 euros [2022].

One such ticket gives access both to the Giardini area and the Arsenale area. This ticket allows you to access each location only once. The sites, however, can be visited on different and non-consecutive days.

Exhibitions in Palazzos across the city and on the islands of the Lagoon have free entry.

Week cards, permanent passes, and “Biennale Cards” are also available, and can be purchased at the Venice Biennale entrance.

Where can I buy tickets for the Venice Biennale?

It is possible to buy tickets for the Venice Biennale both at the entrance and online.

You can buy your ticket from the official website of the Venice Biennale .

Besides the discount for early bird purchases, buying your ticket online allows you to avoid long queues at the ticket booths.

One-week cards and permanent passes are also available, but can only be bought at the Biennale entrance, as they require a copy of your personal ID.

Are there any discounted tickets for the Venice Biennale?

Discounted tickets for the Venice Biennale are available for Students. A small discount is also available for early-bird online purchases.

Does the Venice Biennale have a theme?

Yes, since 1973 the Art Biennale of Venice has a theme. The Architecture Biennale of Venice also has a theme since its creation in 1980.

What is the theme of the current or coming Venice Biennale?

The theme of the Venice Art Biennale 2022 is “THE MILK OF DREAMS” and is curated by Cecilia Alemani.

Regarding the exhibition, Cecilia Alemani stated “As the first Italian woman to hold this position, I intend to give voice to artists to create unique projects that reflect their visions and our society”

The 59 th  International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, titled  The Milk of Dreams , will open to the public from Saturday April 23 to Sunday November 27, 2022, at the Giardini and the Arsenale; it will be curated by Cecilia Alemani and organised by La Biennale di Venezia chaired by Roberto Cicutto. The Pre-opening will take place on April 20, 21 and 22; the Awards Ceremony and Inauguration will be held on 23 April 2022.

You can watch the Venice Biennale Arte 2022 presentation here

Where in Venice is the Venice Biennale?

The main exhibition areas of the Venice Biennale are at the “Giardini” and at the “Arsenale,” two spaces slightly off the most beaten path, except for exhibition-goers, obviously. There are also many works hosted in Palazzos spread around the city and on some islands of the Venetian Lagoon.

The Giardini of the Venice Biennale:

The Giardini, a park on the eastern edge of Venice, is the traditional site of the Venice Biennale since its first edition in 1895.

The Venice Biennale was initially held at the “Palazzo dell’Esposizione” which is where the Central Pavilion is located today. The growing success of the Venice Biennale led to the construction of permanent National Pavilions in this area, the first of which was built by Belgium in 1907.

Today, the Central Pavilion has become a multifunctional structure of 3,500 square meters, and the area around it counts 29 National Pavilions. The pavilions are the property of the individual countries and are managed by their Ministries of Culture.

These are the Nations which have a National Pavilion at the Giardini of the Venice Biennale: Belgium, Hungary, Germany, Great Britain, France, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Czech Republic and Slovak Republic, United States of America, Denmark, Venice , Austria, Greece, Israel, Switzerland, Venezuela, Japan, Finland, Canada, Uruguay, Nordic Countries: Sweden, Norway, Finland, Brazil, Australia, Korea.

The Arsenale

The Arsenale, which once was the largest production center in the pre-industrial era employing up to 2,000 workers a day, is located on the North-East of Venice.

In 1980, the Arsenale opened the ‘Corderie dell’Arsenale’ and the ‘Magazzini del Sale’ which became the exhibition sites of the 1st International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.

Since then, the Arsenale is also used for the Art Biennale.

Today, the Arsenale hosts the Venice Biennale Pavilions of 23 Nations: Albania, Argentina, Chile, People’s Republic of China, Croatia, United Arab Emirates, Philippines, Georgia, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Republic of Kosovo, Latvia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Malta, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Republic of Slovenia, Republic of South Africa, Tunisia e Turkey.

Where are the pavilions of those Nations that aren't at Giardini nor at Arsenale?

The countries not owning a pavilion in the Giardini nor at the Arsenale are exhibited in Palazzos across Venice as well as on islands of the Venetian Lagoon.

Since the locations can change every year, it is important to look on the Biennale website for information on the whereabouts of non-permanent pavilions!

Book an authentic experience in Venice

The history of the Venice Biennale:

The idea that gave birth to the Venice Biennale dates back to 1893 when the Venice City Council decided to create a biennial exhibition of Italian Art to celebrate the silver anniversary of the Italian King Umberto I and Margherita of Savoy

The first Venice Biennale, known as “Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della Città di Venezia,” was opened on April 30, 1895, by the Italian King and Queen themselves, and attended by over 220.000 visitors.

Already at the beginning of the 20th Century, the Venice Biennale became increasingly popular and international, soon leading to the creation of permanent national pavilions.

The first National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale was created for Belgium by Leon Sneyers in 1907. By 1914, six more nations had been established permanently: Hungary, Germany, and Great Britain in 1909, France in 1912, and Russia in 1914.

Except for some rare exceptions, the international exhibition has been held every 2 years since its creation. From 1916 to 1918, and later from 1943 to 1946, however, the Venice Biennale was canceled because of the two World Wars.

In 1920, the first independent Venice Biennale President was appointed. Until then, this role was played by the Mayor of Venice.

In 1930, the Venice Biennale was transformed into an autonomous board, and in 1931 its control passed from the Venice City Council to that of the national Fascist government under Mussolini.

This change brought increased funds and led to the creations of new events such as the Music Biennale in 1930, the Biennale Venice Film Festival in 1932, and the Theatre Biennale in 1934, taking on the multidisciplinary character that the Venice Biennale has to this day.

After WWII, the Venice Biennale renewed its attention to avant-garde movements, introducing to a broader public abstract expressionism and Pop Art, as well as classical Japanese Noh theatre shows and Indian cinema.

In 1972, the Venice Biennale adopted for the first time a theme for its Art exhibition. The theme was “Work or Behaviour.”

Although Architecture works and Dance shows existed before as part of the Venice Biennale, the Foundation created the Venice Biennale dedicated to Architecture in 1980 and the one devoted to Dance in 2003.

Curiosity: Venezia Autentica at the Venice Biennale!

We have had the privileged to take an active part to the Venice Biennale 2018 by speaking at “Redesigning Tourism, an event organized by the U.S. Pavilion “Dimension of Citizenship,” for the Architecture Biennale 2018.

The objective of FREESPACE, the theme of the Architecture Biennale 2018, was to represent a generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity at the core of architecture’s agenda.

The curators of the 2018 U.S. Pavilion, Niall Atkinson, Ann Lui, and Mimi Zeiger, answered the call through “Dimensions of Citizenship” a framework created “through a series of essays digging into the meaning of citizenship and broadly position citizenship as a critical global topic helping architects and designers to envision what it means to be a citizen today”.

It was offered “for future conversations about the conditions, methodologies, and interventions of inclusion and exclusion that impact all of us” because “only when spatial understandings of citizenship—legal, cultural, and ecological—are in sight might we struggle free from antiquated definitions, forms, or bureaucracies and activate potent spaces for design.”

We were pleased to participate to the conversation around the “Dimensions of Citizenship” by taking part to the “Redesigning Tourism” conference and debate and presenting the work we do with our social business, Venezia Autentica, to make tourism a motor of local development.

We believe we provided you with all the information you need to best plan your visit for the next Venice Biennale.

What is left now for you to do is to book your flight to Venice, get your Biennale ticket, and discover what’s new in the coming Venice Biennale!

Remember to set aside enough time to enjoy Venice. Below are a few tips and tools to get you started!

I'm visiting Venice. Why should I follow your recommendations?

The way you visit Venice has an impact both on the quality of your experience and on Venice itself.   Chilling, exploring , shopping , eating and drinking where the locals do, can make a huge impact both on the memories you bring home and on the local economy and community.

POPULAR POSTS LIKE THIS

• Best Places where to eat and drink like a local in Venice
• Interactive map of the best authentic local businesses and places where to eat & drink in Venice
• Why eating and drinking at authentic local businesses matters

Liked this article? Don’t forget to share the love!  

Home >> Visiting Venice >> Tips and Inspiration >> You’re Here

Tips and Inspiration to experience Venice

Want to go on a gondola ride in Venice? Here’s everything you need to know!

How’s the weather in Venice, Italy? We’ve got you covered!

The ultimate guide to the top 10 things to do and see in Venice, Italy

More in Visiting Venice

Go to Visiting Venice >>

• January 19, 2022

You might also like

Want to go on a gondola ride in Venice? Here’s everything you need to know!

How’s the weather in Venice, Italy? We’ve got you covered!

• ONLY PRIVATE TOURS AND ACTIVITIES 

We make it easy to experience Venice with local guides and experts

• 100% GUARANTEED LOCAL AND IMPACTFUL

Looking for things to do in Venice? Experience Venice with a local!  

We’d love to chat.

Let us know

how we can help

venice art biennale 2022: how to visit and what not to miss

Guide to the venice art biennale 2022.

Delayed a year due to the global pandemic, the 2022 Venice Art Biennale is finally almost here. The 59th edition is set to run from April 23 to November 27 (pre-opening on April 20, 21 and 22), bringing together thousands of artworks from over 80 countries. As usual, one of the main attractions is the International Art Exhibition, which this year is curated by Cecilia Alemani under the title ‘The Milk of Dreams’. The exhibition also includes 80 national participations in the historic pavilions at the Giardini, at the Arsenale and in various venues in the city center. In addition, 30 collateral events in the form of exhibitions and initiatives promoted by non-profit national and international bodies and institutions, take place in various locations in Venice. Finally, the city’s museums and art spaces are hosting major exhibitions that coincide with the duration of the show.

As long-time visitors to the Venice Biennale, we know that the overall experience may seem overwhelming. As such, we have gathered a comprehensive overview to help you organize your time around the key exhibitions and events on view. Below you can find our guide to the International Art Exhibition, national pavilions, collateral events, and major museum and art space exhibitions taking place around the city. We have added details of each event’s location so you can easily mark these on your map and start crossing them out when you visit. Though this will hopefully help with making sure you won’t miss any of this year’s highlights, it’s good to keep in mind that it is nearly impossible to see it all in one go – let alone remember it. At the end of the day, we suggest you leave your fear of missing out behind and focus on fully experiencing the works that speak to you. Just remember, you have a good seven months to keep coming back if you need to!

header image: the Gaggiandre venue, part of the Arsenale complex. photo by Andrea Avezzù, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia

THE 59TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION – THE MILK OF DREAMS

Overseen by director and chief curator of High Line Art, Cecilia Alemani, the International Exhibition unfolds in the central pavilion of the Giardini, and in the Corderie, Artiglierie, and the outdoor spaces of the Gaggiandre and Giardino delle Vergini at the Arsenale complex. ‘The Milk of Dreams’ brings together 213 artists from 58 countries, whose work will be displayed within a series of architectural spaces designed by Formafantasma. For the first time in its 127- year history, the Biennale will include a majority of women and gender non-conforming artists. According to Alemani, this choice ‘reflects an international art scene full of creative ferment and a deliberate rethinking of man’s centrality in the history of art and contemporary culture.’ Find out more about it here .

NATIONAL PARTICIPATIONS – GIARDINI

Alongside the Central Pavilion, the Giardini features over 20 National Pavilions enclosed by the green surroundings of the park. These include the Pavilion of Hungary, in which this year artist Zsófia Keresztes presents new sculptures in an exhibition titled ‘After Dreams, I Dare to Defy the Damages’; the Pavilion of Canada, where Vancouver-based artist Stan Douglas represents his home country for the first time; and the British Pavilion, where artist Sonia Boyce will be the first black woman to represent the country at the Venice Biennale. Check the full list of national participations here .

NATIONAL PARTICIPATIONS – ARSENALE

The Arsenale Complex, which includes the Corderie, Artiglierie, and the outdoor spaces of the Gaggiandre and Giardino Delle Vergini, hosts the Italian Pavilion, as well as a number of national participations. Among this year’s exhibitors is the Republic of Uzbekistan, which presents ‘Dixit Algorizmi – The Garden of Knowledge’, an exhibition of works by Abror Zufarov and Charli Tapp curated by Studio Space Caviar and Sheida Ghomashchi. Following its deput in 2019, Ghana is returning with ‘Black Star—The Museum as Freedom’, a show that features works by artist Na Chainkua Reindorf, Afroscope, and Diego Araúja, exhibited in an architectural design by DK Osseo Arare. Check the full list of national participations here .

NATIONAL PARTICIPATIONS – VENUES AROUND THE CITY

Several countries are exhibiting in venues around the city center of Venice. For the 2022 edition, the Dutch Pavilion has decided to break with tradition and present its exhibition at the Chiesetta della Misericordia of Art Events, a deconsecrated 13th- century church in Cannaregio. Meanwhile, it has invited Estonia to make use of the Rietveld Pavilion in the Giardini for the current edition. In Via Garibaldi 1513, artist Tomo Savić-Gecan will represent Croatia with ‘Untitled (Croatian Pavilion), 2022’, an installation that will take the lead story from a randomly selected global news source and feed it as data into an artificial intelligence algorithm. This in turn will prescribe the time, location, duration, movements and thoughts of a group of five performers in the city of Venice. Check the full list of national participations here .

LUCIO FONTANA / ANTONY GORMLEY

What: Lucio Fontana / Antony Gormley When: 20 April—27 November 2022 Where: Negozio Olivetti , Venice, Italy

For the first time, the work of artists Lucio Fontana and Antony Gormley come together in a landmark exhibition. ‘Lucio Fontana / Antony Gormley’ takes place at the historic Negozio Olivetti, a storied mid-century era space designed by architect Carlo Scarpa   (originally commissioned by Italian industrialist Adriano Olivetti in 1957)   and located on the northern edge of Piazza San Marco in Venice.

MARY WEATHERFORD – THE FLAYING OF MARSYAS

Mary Weatherford, The Flaying of Marsyas—Natural White and Satin, 2021–22 (detail) © Mary Weatherford. photo by Fredrik Nilsen Studio

What: Mary Weatherford – The Flaying of Marsyas When: 20 April– 27 November 2022 Where: Museum of Palazzo Grimani

‘The Flaying of Marsyas’ presents new paintings by Mary Weatherford, which are directly inspired by Titian’s late, eponymous masterpiece of 1570–76 and reflect her enduring fascination with the painting. Alluding to the Renaissance painter’s subdued palette, while paying tribute to the distinctive light of Venice, Weatherford uses Flashe paint and neon tubing to distill the historical canvas’s affect.

NILUFAR GALLERY AT AEROPORTO NICELLI, LIDO

image courtesy of Nilufar Gallery

What: Nilufar Gallery

Where: Giovanni Nicelli Private Airport, Lido Island

Launching in conjunction with the opening of the Biennale, Nilufar Gallery’s new exhibition space will occupy an area of ​​the 1920s Giovanni Nicelli Private Airport In Lido Island. The Founder Of Nilufar, Nina Yashar, has curated a selection of historical design pieces, with works by great masters such as Gio Ponti, Franco Albini, Ignazio Moncada, BBPR, Pietro Consagra, Angelo Lelii, and Joaquim Tenreiro, in dialogue with contemporary artefacts by artists such as Martino Gamper, Bethan Laura Wood and Analogia Projects.

DRIFT – SOCIAL SACRIFICE DRONE PERFORMANCE

DRIFT, Social Sacrifice (2022), Courtesy the artists and Aorist

What: DRIFT – Social Sacrifice drone performance Where: TBA21-Academy’s Ocean Space When: Every evening from 9 PM to 11 PM (CET), April 20 to May 1, 2022

DRIFT will stage their first-ever indoor aerial drone performance titled ‘Social Sacrifice’ in Venice alongside the 2022 Venice Art Biennale. Commissioned by Aorist and hosted by TBA21-Academy’s Ocean Space , a Venice-based cultural center for catalysing ocean literacy, research, and advocacy through the arts, Social Sacrifice animates a flying school of A.I. fish that will ‘swim’ through the Church of San Lorenzo.

ANSELM KIEFER – QUESTI SCRITTI, QUANDO VERRANNO BRUCIATI, DARANNO FINALMENTE UN PO’ DI LUCE

What: Anselm Kiefer – Questi Scritti, Quando Verranno Bruciati, Daranno Finalmente Un Po’ Di Luce When: April 20 – October 29, 2022 Where: Palazzo Ducale , San Marco, 1

Curated by Gabriella Belli and Janne Sirén, Anselm Kiefer’s exhibition ‘Questi Scritti, Quando Verranno Bruciati, Daranno Finalmente Un Po’ Di Luce’ opens on April 20 at Palazzo Ducale. Linked to the celebrations marking the 1600th anniversary of the founding of Venice, a series of works created specifically for the palazzo will be presented at the Sala dello Scrutinio, in close dialogue with the monumental paintings on the ceiling in the historic space.

PARASOL UNIT – UNCOMBED, UNFORESEEN, UNCONSTRAINED

What: Uncombed, Unforeseen, Unconstrained by Parasol Unit

When: April 23 – November 27, 2022

Where: Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello

For the duration of the Biennale, Parasol unit presents ‘Uncombed, Unforeseen, Unconstrained’, a group exhibition of works by eleven international contemporary visual artists at the Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello.

The exhibition brings together works by artists Darren Almond, Oliver Beer, Rana Begum with Hyetal, Julian Charrière, David Claerbout, Bharti Kher, Arghavan Khosravi, Teresa Margolles, Si On, Martin Puryear, and Rayyane Tabet. All work in different media to address a disparate range of topics, yet, common to them all is a deep concern for our world and a preoccupation with a comparable phenomenon that in scientific terms is defined as entropy, that is the measure of disorder, randomness, and unpredictability within a system.

ANISH KAPOOR RETROSPECTIVE AT THE GALLERIE DELL’ACCADEMIA DI VENEZIA

What: Anish Kapoor

When: April 20 – October 9, 2022

Where: Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia

The Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia presents a comprehensive retrospective on the work of Anish Kapoor, marking him the first British artist to be honoured with a major exhibition at the museum. The exhibition, postponed from 2021 because of the pandemic, is curated by art historian Taco Dibbits, General Director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

MARLENE DUMAS – OPEN-END

Marlene Dumas, Betrayal, 1994. private collection, courtesy David Zwirner, photo by Emma Estwic, New York © Marlene Dumas

What: Marlene Dumas. open-end

When: March 27, 2022 – January 8, 2023

Where: Palazzo Grassi

Palazzo Grassi presents ‘open-end’, the first comprehensive solo show presenting the work of Marlene Dumas in Italy, as part of the cycle of monographic shows organised by the Pinault Collection dedicated to major contemporary artists.

RONY PLESL – TREES GROW FROM THE SKY

What: Rony Plesl – Trees Grow from the Sky

Where: Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione

Trees Grow from the Sky, a collateral event of the 2022 biennale, presents a large-scale site-specific installation by Czech artist and sculptor Rony Plesl in the historic Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione. Plesl unveils a new revolutionary full-relief glass casting technology, Vitrum Vivum, which coincides with the 2022 International Year of Glass thus presenting a timely artistic and technological exploration of the material.

KEHINDE WILEY – AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF SILENCE

What: Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence

Where: Fondazione Giorgio Cini

Curated by Christophe Leribault, the exhibition ‘Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence’ is hosted at Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the occasion of the Biennale. For this new body of work, Wiley sheds light on the brutalities of American and global colonial pasts using the language of the fallen hero. Part of the Collateral Events of the 59th International Art Exhibition, the show is Organized by Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and Supported by TEMPLON.

REOPENING MUSEO FORTUNY

image © Massimo Listri

What: Museo Fortuny

When: from March 9, 2022

Where: Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei

Two years after the ‘Acqua Granda’ flooding seriously damaged the Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei, Mariano Fortuny’s house museum reopens its doors to the public, following essential conservation work on the ground floor, and the refurbishment of the upper floors.The Fortuny, as it is called by Venetians, is to become a permanent exhibition venue. Paintings, clothes and fabrics, lighting and stage designs and everything associated with the artistic and productive paths that evolved in the palace is once again on display for Venetians and visitors to admire all year round. The museum will also continue to host temporary exhibitions, with a particular emphasis on the contemporary.

RACHEL LEE HOVNANIAN – ANGELS LISTENING

What: Rachel Lee Hovnanian – Angels Listening When: 23 April – 27 November, 2022 Where: CSDCA , Biblioteca Zenobiana del Temanza, Dorsoduro 1602

Centro Studi e Documentazione della Cultura Armena (CSDCA), Venice, presents Angels Listening, an immersive and intimate installation by artist Rachel Lee Hovnanian. Curated by Annalisa Bugliani, the exhibition is a Collateral Event of the Biennale and is being presented at the Biblioteca Zenobiana del Temanza and in its gardens in Dorsoduro, a historic 18th-century Venetian building that has served as the headquarters of CSDCA since 1991.

MARC QUINN – HISTORYNOW

What: MARC QUINN – HISTORYNOW

When: April 21- October 23, 2022

Where: National Archaeological Museum of Venice , Piazzetta San Marco 17

On the occasion of the Biennale, the National Archaeological Museum of Venice presents the exhibition HISTORYNOW, by British artist Marc Quinn. Fondazione Sozzani is pleased to announce that Francesca Pini, a friend of the Foundation, has co-curated with Aindrea Emelife the artist’s solo show, which surveys our increasing digital interdependence at a vital point in history.

happening now! discover how mara, the historic italian company specialized in the production of aesthetic and functional furnishing systems and elements, fills the home office and office with minimal and contemporary designs.

venice art biennale 2022 (20)

Product library.

a diverse digital database that acts as a valuable guide in gaining insight and information about a product directly from the manufacturer, and serves as a rich reference point in developing a project or scheme.

• art interviews (130)
• exhibition design (569)
• interactive installation (226)
• studio drift (27)
• BMW art car (19)
• car design (805)
• julie mehretu (4)
• artificial intelligence (360)

designboom will always be there for you

British Council UK at the Venice Biennale

Plan your visit.

British Council

The Venice Biennale (La Biennale di Venezia) takes place across two venues, the Giardini and the Arsenale, in the eastern part of Venice, Italy. The British Pavilion is located in the Giardini.

We will announce more news about the latest exhibition soon.

British Pavilion opening times

For more information on Venice Biennale venues and opening times, visit the Venice Biennale website .

From 1 April 2022, with the exception of children under 12 years of age, all ticket holders must present an EU Digital Covid Certificate, or equivalent certificate recognised by the Italian State, to access the 59th International Art Exhibition.

The 'EU Digital COVID Certificate' (EUDCC) is digital proof, valid in all EU countries, that a person has either been vaccinated against COVID-19, has recovered from COVID-19, or has received a negative test result.

For British visitors, the British Council has been informed that the NHS Covid Pass will be recognised for entry to La Biennale. Please visit the Venice Biennale website for full guidance and the most up-to-date information on entry requirements before booking.

Visitors need a ticket to enter the Venice Biennale and the British Pavilion. The price of a standard ticket is €25, with discounts available for concessions. More information and tickets are available on the Venice Biennale website .

How to get to the British Pavilion

The British Pavilion is located in the Giardini and the nearest Vaporetto stop is Giardini.

Find out more about transport, parking and the services available for visitors on the Venice Biennale website .

Accessibility

We hope you find the following information helpful but do also visit the  Venice Biennale website  for more details about access in the Giardini:

• the British Pavilion is accessible to wheelchairs and mobility scooter users via a lift
• we welcome guide dogs and hearing dogs at the Pavilion
• large print exhibition guides in English and Italian are available at the Pavilion, and online
• all films produced by the British Council for the Venice Biennale are captioned.

• Icon Link Plus Icon

A Guide to the 2022 Venice Biennale National Pavilions, From Futuristic Gardens to AI-Influenced Performance Art

By Alex Greenberger

Alex Greenberger

Senior Editor, ARTnews

At long last, the 2022 Venice Biennale is finally almost here. Delayed a year by the pandemic, this iteration of the famed Italian art show, the Biennale’s 59th, is currently set to run from April 23 to November 27.

Often, the biggest attraction is the main exhibition, which this year is being overseen by Cecilia Alemani. Placing a focus on Surrealism and an unprecedented emphasis on women artists, that show will be titled “The Milk of Dreams,” in reference to Leonora Carrington’s writings.

But just as exciting are the 90-plus national pavilions around that show. Some of those pavilions will be in dialogue with Alemani’s exhibition, though most will not. Their topics will range from the preservation of peat bogs in Patagonia to Black women’s resilience, from economic decline in Italy to the Ghanaian flag, from the German Pavilion as a political site itself to “nothing” at all at the Croatian Pavilion.

Below, a guide to the dozens of national pavilions that have so far been announced, along with four participants that are producing Biennale-sanctioned collateral events. The majority of the pavilions are located in the Arsenale and the Giardini—the two main venues for the Biennale’s main exhibition—though some are sited at various locations across the city.

Albania will be one of the few countries to be represented solely by a dead artist at this year’s Venice Biennale. Lumturi Blloshmi , who died of Covid-related complications in 2020, will be given a posthumous survey in the form of the 2022 Albanian Pavilion, with around a dozen pieces covering the span of the artist’s oeuvre. She’s the first woman to represent Albania at the Venice Biennale. Adela Demetja , the curator organizing the pavilion, told Euronews Albania that Blloshmi was “one of the first Albanian artists [to] have incorporated performance in her work.”

Location: Arsenale

Mónica Heller , whose paintings and videos have focused on what new technologies have done to our emotions, will represent Argentina. According to Terremoto , her pavilion will include 15 modules displaying 3D animations, marking the first time that the site has played host to a video installation. Alejo Ponce de León , who will curate the pavilion, said that the lack of overt politics in her work accounts for “why she can offer radical solutions to the contemporary problem of the artistic image.”

Andrius Arutiunian will represent Armenia at the Venice Biennale with a new series of sound works called “Gharib.” Set in a pavilion curated by Anne Davidian and Elena Sorokina , these new pieces will explore forms of estrangement and belonging. A website for the pavilion teases the presentation using a puzzling phrase: “One starts by merely imagining real things. Eventually, the real things themselves manifest.”

Location: Campo della Tana, Castello 2125

Sound artist Marco Fusinato will represent Australia in the 59th Venice Biennale, and Alexie Glass-Kantor , executive director of Artspace in Sydney, will organize Fusinato’s exhibition. In his work, which was also included in the main exhibition of the 2015 Venice Biennale, curated by Okwui Enwezor, Fusinato explores modes of perception. Pieces by the artist also figured in the Museum of Modern Art’s first-ever exhibition of sound art, which went on view in 2013. Fusinato’s pavilion, titled “DESASTRES,” was produced entirely at home, since the artist could not access his studio during Australia’s strict lockdown. In a rather ambitious gesture, Fusinato himself will be on hand to play electric guitar at the Biennale, in an elusive project that will act as a continuation of the artist’s long-term interest in the thin boundary between order and disorder.

Location: Giardini

Collaborators Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl will represent Austria at the exhibition. Seeking to upend the traditional format of exhibitions, the artists have promised that their exhibition will pay mind to the pavilion’s unusual structure, which includes a colonnade that runs through its interior. Titled “Invitation of the Soft Machine and Her Angry Body Parts,” their exhibition will accordingly be divided in two, with one half for each artist. Knebl will investigate sociopolitical issues of the 1970s, while Scheirl will create what is being billed as a “walk-in, ‘accessible’ painting”; both halves will display an interest in the politics of desire. The Austrian pavilion will be curated by Karola Kraus , director of the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien.

There still hasn’t been an official announcement for the 2022 Azerbaijani Pavilion, though the Venice Biennale’s website lists these artists as its participants: Narmin Israfilova , Infinity , Ramina Saadatkhan , Fidan Novruzova , Fidan Akhundova , Sabiha Khankishiyeva , and Agdes Baghirzade . Emin Mammadov is named as the pavilion’s curator.

Location: Procuratie Vecchie San Marco 153/a/139

There still hasn’t been an official announcement for the 2022 Bangladeshi Pavilion, though the Venice Biennale’s website lists these artists as its participants: Jamal Uddin Ahmed , Mohammad Iqbal , Harun-Ar-Rashid , Sumon Wahed , Promity Hossain , Mohammad Eunus , Marco Cassarà , Franco Marrocco , and Giuseppe Diego Spinelli . Viviana Vannucci is named as the pavilion’s curator.

Location: Palazzo Pisani Revedin, San Marco 4013

Francis Alÿs , who showed work in the Iraq Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, will represent Belgium at exhibition’s 59th edition. Hilde Teerlinck , a curator at the Han Nefkens Foundation in Barcelona, is organizing the country’s pavilion, where Alÿs will show a new work building on his video Children’s Games #19: Haram Soccer (2017). The artist’s politically-minded films and videos often focus on borders and conflict, his pieces have also been shown in main exhibitions of past Venice Biennales (in 1999, 2001, and 2007).

There still hasn’t been an official announcement for the 2022 Bolivian Pavilion, but the Venice Biennale’s website lists Warmichacha as the country’s representative. Roberto Aguilar Quisbert is listed as the pavilion’s curator.

Location: Artspace4rent, Cannaregio 4120

Hot off organizing the Bienal de São Paulo’s 2021 edition, Jacopo Crivelli Visconti is curating the Venice Biennale’s 2022 pavilion. He’s picked Jonathas de Andrade , an artist whose videos have drawn widespread acclaim abroad. De Andrade, whose work often focuses on under-represented communities in Brazil, will once more mull what constitutes national identity in his home country with a pavilion titled “Com o coração saindo pela boca” (“With the heart coming out of the mouth”). A touchstone for the pavilion will be a giant sculpture of a reclining woman often used to offer anatomical lessons to youths. Known as Eva, de Andrade encountered it as a child. In Venice, he will show photo-based works, interactive sculptures, and a video considering the human body in a presentation that recalls a science fair.

Michail Michailov , who is best known internationally for formerly being a member of the collective Gelitin, will represent Bulgaria this year. Curated by Irina Batkova , the pavilion will be titled “There you are.” According to its organizers, the pavilion will resemble a “minimalist and absurd environment” that will feature, among other things, elements that recall detritus left behind by humans. The artist has spent time drawing stains and pieces of dust found in his studio, and that process has informed the pavilion itself.

Location: Spazio Ravà, San Polo 1100

Canada has chosen video artist and photographer Stan Douglas for its pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale. In his work, Douglas centers the narratives of historically marginalized people, and he has previously exhibited at four past editions of La Biennale. At the Venice Biennale, Douglas will focus specifically on the years 2011 and 1848. The former was the year that Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring took place; the latter was the year of upheavals of various kinds across Europe. Within the Giardini, at the country’s pavilion, Douglas will show four large-scale photographs, but make sure to also visit the show’s other site in the Dorsoduro neighborhood, where he’s exhibiting a new two-screen video installation that promises to be the main attraction. The National Gallery of Canada in Ontario is the institution commissioning Canada’s 2022 pavilion, with Reid Shier curating.

Location: Giardini and Magazzini del Sale n5

Cameroon’s inaugural pavilion at the Biennale is likely going to be talked about for multiple reasons, only one of which is that, unlike the majority of pavilions, this one isn’t being funded by the country’s government. (Despite this, it is commissioned by the Cameroonian Ministry of Culture.) Instead, it is being underwritten by the collective Global Crypto Art DAO, which will organize what is believed to be the first-ever NFT show at the Venice Biennale as part of the pavilion. Francis Nathan Abiamba , Angéle Etoundi Essamba , Shay Frisch , Justine Gaga , Salifou Lindou , Umberto Mariani , Matteo Mezzadri , and Jorge R. Pombo are set to show at the pavilion, which is titled “The Times of the Chimera.” Its curators are Paul Emmanuel Loga Mahop and Sandro Orlandi Stagl .

Location: Liceo Artistico Guggenheim, Dorsoduro 2613 and Palazzo Ca’ Bernardo Molon, San Polo 2186

In an unconventional move, Chile has selected not just one representative for its pavilion this year but four: artist Ariel Bustamante , art historian Carla Macchiavello , architect Alfredo Thiermann , and filmmaker Dominga Sotomayor . Their pavilion, curated by Camila Marambio and titled “Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol,” views Indigenous struggle for survival and the fight against climate change as being intimately related. Using the preservation of peat bogs in Patagonia as a jumping-off point, the pavilion will focus on the persistence of the Selk’nam people who live near them.

China’s pavilion will this year be given the title “Meta-Scape,” effectively acting as a modern take on the concept of jing , which refers to a fusion of man and machine. A sculpture called Snowman by Wang Yuyang will dominate part of the pavilion; it resembles a knot of triangular forms, and will be set within a garden. Also on view at this pavilion, curated by Zhang Zikang , will be works by Xu Lei and Liu Jiayu .

Croatia’s representative at the 2022 Venice Biennale is Tomo Savić-Gecan , an artist who has said he exhibits “nothing” as a practice. Savić-Gecan’s work for the pavilion will rely on articles published by a number of media outlets that will be analyzed for AI, which will then provide instructions to five performers situated around Venice. A release about the pavilion promises that the performers will undertake “carefully choreographed and extremely minimal movements,” but that these motions won’t be obvious unless you know what you’re looking for. Since the location of these performances will change frequently, it’s best to check the Croatian Pavilion’s site for more details. On tap to curate will be Elena Filipovic , who runs a closely watched exhibition program at the Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland. The pavilion’s title is perhaps unsurprisingly offbeat: Untitled (Croatian Pavilion) .

Location: via Garibaldi 1513, Castello

There still hasn’t been an official announcement for the 2022 Cuban Pavilion, but the Venice Biennale’s website lists Rafael Villares , Kcho , and Giuseppe Stampone as the country’s representatives. Nelson Ramirez de Arellano Conde is listed as the pavilion’s curator.

Location: Isola di San Servolo

Little is known about the Danish Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, although it has been announced that Uffe Isolotto will be representing the country and that Jacob Lillemose will be curating Isolotto’s presentation. On Instagram, Isolotto has been teasing his Danish Pavilion, titled “We Walked the Earth,” using a series of bizarre renderings of futuristic humans and hybrid animals, along with descriptions referring to a Danish farm in operation years from now.

Weaam El-Masry , Mohamed Shoukry , and Ahmed El-Shaer were tapped to represent Egypt in January 2022. The three artists are “among the most prominent Egyptian contemporary artists,” Ahram Online reported, and the three are set to exhibit together in a show called “Eden Like Garden.” A curator for the pavilion wasn’t named by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture in its announcement.

At the invitation of the Mondriaan Fund, Estonia will take over the Dutch pavilion, located in the show’s main exhibition grounds in the Giardini, for the upcoming Biennale. (The Netherlands will host its participation elsewhere in the city.) The country has participated in the Venice Biennale since 1997, and for its participation in the 2022 edition, the Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art has selected artists Kristina Norman and Bita Razavi to present a collaborative project, titled “Orchidelirium: An Appetite for Abundance,” which will look at the work of the underknown, 20th-century Estonian artist Emily Rosaly Saal , who made watercolors and paintings of tropical plants. Norman is a Tallin-based artist who also represented Estonia at the Biennale in 2009, and Razavi is a Tehran-born artist who works between Helsinki and the Estonian countryside. Their participation is curated by Tallinn Art Hall’s Corina L. Apostol .

Finland has picked video and performance artist Pilvi Takala for its pavilion at La Biennale. The work Takala will present, a new video installation called Close Watch , will draw on Takala’s own experiences working as a qualified security guard. The specific focus of the piece will be workshops that she developed during a six-month stint where she worked at a shopping mall in Finland. The Finnish pavilion will be curated by Christina Li and is commissioned and produced by Frame Contemporary Art Finland.

Zineb Sedira , who creates video installations and photographs exploring memory, will represent France at the storied exhibition. Based in London, the artist has previously exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Montreal, the Tate Britain, and other international institutions. Sedira will be the first artist of Algerian descent to represent the country at the Venice Biennale, where she will debut a new film called Les Rêves n’ont pas de titre (Dreams Have No Titles), which will deal with the groundswell of political activism in France, Algeria, and Italy during the 1960s and ’70s and its influence on filmmaking of the era. Yasmina Reggad , Sam Bardaouil , and Till Fellrath have been lined up to curate the pavilion.

The duo Mariam Natroshvili and Detu Jincharadze will represent Georgia at the Venice Biennale with a pavilion titled “I Pity the Garden.” It’s set to take the form of a surreal installation with, at its center, a VR experience called Ghost Garden , which will envision plants that have become extinct. “This ecological crisis, in real life and represented here in VR, is one of the signs of the end,” the pavilion’s announcement reads. The curatorial platform In-between Conditions is organizing the project.

Location: Spazio Punch, Fondamenta S. Biagio, 800/O, Giudecca

Maria Eichhorn , who is representing Germany at the Venice Biennale this year, is known for her conceptually oriented work that has taken the form of behind-the-scenes transactions and documentation of them. Whether her new work for the German Pavilion will be similar remains to be seen, although she has hinted that she will explicitly deal with the political context of the structure, which was once adorned with the Nazi imperial eagle. Speaking to Museum Ludwig director Yilmaz Dziewior , who is curating the pavilion this time, Eichhorn said, “The work is accessible. It can be experienced both conceptually and—physically and in motion—on site.”

When Ghana made its Venice Biennale debut in 2019, its pavilion was among the most celebrated offerings at the exhibition. Now, Ghana is returning with curator Nana Oforiatta Ayim at the helm. She’s organizing a show called “Black Star—The Museum as Freedom,” which views the Ghanaian flag as a symbol of freedom. It will feature work by artist Na Chainkua Reindorf , Afroscope , and Diego Araúja , along with an architectural design courtesy of DK Osseo Arare. “As we outgrow and move beyond ill-fitting systems; new ones, not yet defined, that draw on rich histories, not with nostalgia but with discernment of hindsight and experience; are forming,” Oforiatta Ayim said of her pavilion.

Great Britain

The London-based artist Sonia Boyce will be the first Black woman to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale. Boyce’s drawings, paintings, and photographs have featured portraits of Black subjects and her work has alluded to her Afro-Caribbean heritage. The artist’s practice also spans video, audio, and performance work, and her pieces can be found in the collections of Tate Modern, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and other institutions. Emma Ridgway will curate Boyce’s presentation.

At this year’s Greek Pavilion, which bears the intriguing name “Oedipus in Search of Colonus,” Loukia Alavanou will show a new VR work and sound installation that draw connections between her home country’s ancient heritage and Roma communities in the Nea Zoi region in Greece, northwest of Athens. Oedipus was exiled to the city of Colonus, as the myth goes, and Alavanou believes there are comparisons to be made with the Roma people, who have also been cast out of Athens by sociopolitical means. The pavilion, its organizers have said, will envision “art [as] an impossible place.” Heinz Peter Schwerfel will curate the exhibition.

Grenada’s pavilion is somewhat unusual this year in that the artist collective chosen to represent the country didn’t exist until the exhibition started to be organized. That group, the Cypher Art Collective of Grenada , consists of seven artists who came together during the pandemic. At the Biennale, they will focus on the tradition of Shakespeare Mas, a ritual celebration of the Bard’s writings that has been integral to the neighboring island of Carriacou, which a dependency of Grenada. Drawing on research conducted over the past couple years, the collective will present a new two-channel film installation, paintings, and more that will be part of a presentation organized by Daniele Radini Tedeschi .

Location: Il Giardino Bianco Art SpaceVia Giuseppe Garibaldi, 1814

There still hasn’t been an official announcement for the 2022 Guatemalan Pavilion, but the Venice Biennale’s website lists Christian Escobar as both the artist representing the country and the curator of the pavilion.

Location: SPUMA – Space For The Arts Giudecca 800/R

Angela Su is representing Hong Kong this year, in a presentation being overseen by curator Freya Chou . (The Hong Kong presentation, unlike most of the pavilions here, is not recognized by the Biennale as a national entry, rendering it ineligible for the Golden Lion for best national participation. It is officially considered a collateral exhibition, however.) While Su hasn’t detailed what her project will be, Chou has said it will be a further extension of the artist’s research-based practice, which places a “focus on the interrelations between our state of being and scientific technology.” After its run in Venice, the work will head to the M+ museum, which co-organized the presentation.

Hungary’s 2022 Venice Biennale pavilion is being done by artist Zsófia Keresztes under the supervision of curator Mónika Zsikla , making this the first time ever that both the pavilion’s representative and organizer are women. Titled “After Dreams, I Dare to Defy the Damages,” the pavilion will feature new sculptures by Keresztes that mull the fluidity of identity. After showing at the Venice Biennale, those works will come to the Ludwig Museum in Budapest.

Sigurður Guðjónsson , who is known for his multimedia installations that produce a range of sensory experiences, was selected to rep Iceland in at the 2022 Biennale. The artist has exhibited his work at the National Gallery of Iceland, the Reykjavik Art Museum, the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Bergen Kunsthall in Norway, and other international institutions. Recent presentations at Iceland’s pavilion—like Christoph Büchel’s 2015 installation The Mosque , which was shut down by Venice police—have drawn significant attention in past years. Mónica Bello will curate this year’s presentation.

In her sculptures composed of steel, wood, glass, and other elements Niamh O’Malley seeks to portray invisible forces visually. Motion and transparency have formed two of her conceptual concerns, and it appears that she will continue her inquiry in the nature of both of them in her Venice Biennale pavilion for Ireland, which is being organized by the curatorial team of Dublin’s Temple Bar Gallery + Studios . Titled “Gather,” the project will tour Ireland after its run in Venice.

Ilit Azoulay is best known for her conceptual artworks that regard photography as something akin to everyday detritus. The images she makes are often impartial ones, with pieces cropped out, and she provides context in the form of text and audio. For a project called “Queendom” at the Venice Biennale, she will present a new body of work consisting of photography and a sound installation. Shelley Harten will curate the pavilion.

Unlike most countries who show at the Venice Biennale, Italy tends to give its pavilion over to ambitious multi-person exhibitions. But, for the first time in recent memory, now it’s fallen in line with almost everyone else and gone with just one artist: Gian Maria Tosatti . Critic Eugenio Viola will curate Tosatti’s pavilion, which will feature a site-specific installation called History of Night and Destiny of Comets that is set to consider an epic array of topics related to economic and industrial development in Italy.

The Netherlands

melanie bonajo will represent the Netherlands at La Biennale with a presentation organized by Maaike Gouwenberg , Geir Haraldseth , and Soraya Pol . bonajo, who makes films as well as installations and performance pieces, examines the ways in which technology can cultivate feelings of alienation and intimacy. Their Venice Biennale pavilion will be host to a new video installation, When the body says Yes , that responds to a desire for touch during a lonely moment. “With this project we want to reprioritise the body as a vehicle for connection and safety, cultivating touch and friendship as a form of activism,” bonajo said.

Location: Chiesetta della Misericordia of Art Events, Cannaregio

New Zealand

In September 2019, New Zealand became the first country to announce its plans for the next edition of the Venice Biennale. Yuki Kihara will be the first artist of Pacific descent to represent the country when she presents work at the exhibition in 2022. Kihara’s photographs, videos, and performances often examine the weight of histories of colonialism. At the Venice Biennale, Kihara will debut a new project called Paradise Camp that comprises photographs, video, and archival materials. Its focus will be people who identify as Fa’afafine, the Samoan word for the third gender, which translates to “in the manner of a woman.” The project will contend with stereotypes and misunderstandings about Fa’afafine people. Natalie King , a professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia, will curate the presentation.

North Macedonia

For their pavilion for North Macedonia, Robert Jankuloski and Monika Moteska will create an installation that includes video, photography, and various objects. Titled Landscape Experience , it will explore the destruction of the natural world by humanity in an attempt to allow the artists to “scratch and delve deeper into the meaning of our existence and our responsibility.” Ana Frangovska and Sanja Kojic Mladenov will serve as the pavilion’s curators.

Location: Scuola dei Laneri, Santa Croce 113/A

Art historian Aisha Stoby was picked to organized Oman’s first-ever pavilion at the Venice Biennale, which is set to feature a range of artists who hail from the country or have connections to it. Among them is Anwar Sonya , who has been regarded as one of the country’s foremost living artists, and the late sound artist Raiya Al Rawahi , whose final works will be shown here. Also set to participate in the show are Hassan Meer , Budoor Al Riyami , and Radhika Khimki .

Attempts to bring Palestine to the Venice Biennale have previously proven controversial—in 2002, for example, curator Francesco Bonami proposed hosting a Palestinian Pavilion at the biennial, only to be accused of anti-Semitism in the Italian press. This year, there won’t be a Palestinian Pavilion either, but there will be a collateral exhibition courtesy of the Palestine Museum in Woodbridge, Connecticut. Titled “From Palestine with Art,” the show will be curated by Nancy Nesvet , a curator at the museum, and will feature 19 artists with ties to Palestine, including Ibrahim Alazza, Mohamed Khalil, and Rana Matar. Adding an explicitly political dimension to the show, there will be another presence from Palestine as well: a live tree that will be hung with keys from refugees.

Location: Palazzo Mora, Room 8, Cannaregio 3659

Through painting and collage, Herbert Rodriguez has dealt head-on with the darker side of Peruvian society, meditating on the destruction of the Amazon, authoritarian governments in the country, and the dangers posed to Indigenous peoples there. His Venice Biennale pavilion, “Peace is a Corrosive Promise,” will be curated by Jorge Villarcorta and Viola Varotto .

The Phillippines

Don’t come to the Philippines’s pavilion expecting to see only art—there will be works in other mediums also on view. For a presentation called “This is our gathering/Andi taku e sana, Amung taku di sana,” artist Gerardo Tan , musicologist Felicidad A. Prudente , and weaver Sammy Buhle will have on view an exhibition that draws out connections between sound and textiles. “The exhibition involves an interdisciplinary approach to transmitting culture with sound and textile, weaving the customary and the contemporary across the archipelago,” the pavilion’s announcement reads. Yael Buencamino Borromeo and Arvin Jason Flores will curate the pavilion.

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas , who is best known for her colorful patchwork pieces that contend with stereotypes about the Romani people, will represent Poland at this year’s Venice Biennale. In a presentation curated by Wojciech Szymański and Joanna Warsza , the Polish-Romani artist will exhibit “a magical world, subjected to constant ‘re-enchanting,’ which will become a kind of refuge for the audience—an asylum offering hope and respite,” according to announcement for the pavilion.

Pedro Neves Marques , a video artist whose star is on the rise, was picked to represent Portugal. Neves Marques’s pavilion, organized by João Mourão and Luís Silva , will be called “Vampires in Space” and will feature new films and poems by the artist. Its focus will be vampires, which, in the artist’s interpretation, can be used to address our conceptions of gender and sexuality. As details about the 2022 Portuguese Pavilion were revealed, a controversy over the selection process for it also emerged. Curator Bruno Leitão alleged that his proposed artist, Grada Kilomba, should have been given the opportunity to represent Portugal, but that a flawed scoring system by its jury prevented that from happening. Kilomba would have become the first Black artist to represent Portugal, had Leitão’s plan come to fruition.

Location: Palazzo Franchetti San Marco 2847

In one of her biggest projects since winning the top award at the Berlin Film Festival for her boundary-pushing film Touch Me Not (2018), Adina Pintilie will do the Romanian Pavilion at this year’s Biennale. She will exhibit a new film project, You Are Another Me – A Cathedral of the Body , which will mull the state of bodies under attack by right-wing movements. Cosmin Costinas and Viktor Neumann , who are curating the pavilion, said in a statement, “Against the backdrop of a public sphere haunted by biopolitical control, religious and cultural conservatism, and a traditionally corrosive climate of shame, the Romanian Pavilion is conceived as a site to reflect upon the body as a device to process recognized and unrecognized history, trauma, and desires.”

Location; Giardini and New Gallery of the Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research (Palazzo Correr, Campo Santa Fosca, Cannareggio 2214 )

Kirill Savchenkov and Alexandra Sukhareva were supposed to represent Russia this year at the Venice Biennale, in a presentation that would respond to the Surrealism-heavy main show. Raimundas Malašauskas , who was curating this year’s Russian Pavilion, said that the presentation was to evoke “a transition from one state to another one, a twisted flow between future and past, a suspended division between dead and alive (and AI), day and night.” But amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Savchenkov, Sukhareva, and Malašauskas all pulled out of the pavilion, which was subsequently canceled. “There is no place for art when civilians are dying under the fire of missiles, when citizens of Ukraine are hiding in shelters, when Russian protesters are getting silenced,” the artists wrote in a statement.

The Nordic Pavilion, which represents Norway, Finland, and Sweden, will change its name for the 2022 edition to the Sámi Pavilion in honor of the three Indigenous artists who will take over the exhibition space. Those artists are Pauliina Feodoroff , Máret Ánne Sara , and Anders Sunna , who have focused on issues affecting the region’s Indigenous Sámi community in their work. “At this pivotal moment, it is vital to consider Indigenous ways of relating to the environment and to each other,” said Katya García-Antón , the director of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, which commissioned the pavilion.

There still hasn’t been an official announcement for San Marino’s pavilion, but the Venice Biennale’s website lists Elisa Cantarelli, Nicoletta Ceccoli, Roberto Paci Dalò, Endless, Michelangelo Galliani, Rosa Mundi, Anne-Cécile Surga, and Michele Tombolini as the country’s representatives. Vincenzo Rotondo is listed as the pavilion’s curator.

Location: Palazzo Donà Dalle Rose, Fondamenta Nove Cannaregio 5038

Saudi Arabia

While little is known about Saudi Arabia’s pavilion this year, the Biennale website lists Muhannad Shono as the country’s representative. Within Saudi Arabia, where he is currently an artist in resident at the ancient city of AlUla, Shono has enjoyed a fast rise. He’s known for sculptures that reflect on his own origins as the child of Circassian parents from Syria. Reem Fadda will curate Shono’s pavilion, which is titled “The Teaching Tree.”

Alberta Whittle , whose videos and installations address anti-Blackness and colonialism, was picked to represent Scotland, with the art festival Glasgow International set to curate her exhibition. (Technically, Scotland does not have pavilion, which makes this exhibition a Biennale-sanctioned collateral event.) What, exactly, Whittle will produce isn’t yet known, though it appears to build on themes already present in her work. “With so many urgent conversations on health, grief, refusal, race and healing at the forefront of my mind, now is the moment to ask questions about how we can unlearn and be more actively reflective on a personal level as well as collectively,” she said in a statement.

Location: Docks Cantieri Cucchini, S. Pietro di Castello 40

Continuing an interest in humanity’s relationship with the natural world that can be seen in many other pavilions this year, Serbia’s representative, Vladimir Nikolic , will focus on water, in a pavilion that seeks to understand man’s “entanglement and interdependence” with aqueous bodies. A new film titled 800m relies on the “colonial” perspective of a drone to photograph various images of the artist’s body, while another work called A Document will take the form of a painting. Biljana Ciric will curate the pavilion, titled “Walking with Water.”

With the Venice Biennale’s main exhibition foregrounding Surrealism, Slovenia has taken the occasion to showcase works by Marko Jakše , whose paintings often envision worlds where human-like figures loom larger than life and natural settings know no bounds. The paintings he will exhibit in the pavilion, titled “Without a Master,” will deal with “what actually is the primordial in and outside us, and above all, how something is ,” according to an announcement. Robert Simonišek will curate the pavilion.

For the past few years, artist Shubigi Rao has been at work on a project called “Pulp,” whose ongoing focus has been the destruction of books. Her Singaporean Pavilion will be the latest iteration of that series, entitled “Pulp III: A Short Biography of the Banished Book.” Billed as a “lyrical manuscript,” the work will explore the dissemination of knowledge across history. Ute Meta Bauer , who is curating the pavilion, has described Rao’s latest project as “an appreciation for what it means to persist, to productively and meaningfully live together.”

South Africa

South Africa’s pavilion is loosely themed around resilience and self-realization during the current pandemic, with works by three artists in multiple mediums illustrating those concepts. Roger Ballen will debut paintings made on glass that are etched in a way that recalls patterns created by female inmates on blacked-out prison windows, Lebohang Kganye will exhibit photographs in which she situates herself in scenes recalling fairy tales, and Phumulani Ntuli will show a stop-motion animation in which he appears in African dress before a series of waves. Amé Bell will organize the pavilion, which is titled “Into the Light.”

Ignasi Aballí will represent Spain at the 2022 Biennale, showing an architectural installation titled Corrección . The artist’s interdisciplinary practice spans painting, photography, film, and other mediums, and his work often explores notions of materiality and space. He told the newspaper El País that Corrección will be an environment unto itself built inside the Spanish pavilion, and that it “will create a new interior architecture with impossible, absurd and unimaginable spaces, through which at some points it will not be possible to go through and at others, the openings, the corridors and all the rooms will change; it will be seen in a way that has never been seen.” The presentation is curated by art historian Beatriz Espejo .

Switzerland

Latifa Echakhch , whose installations and sculptures deal with political strife and immigration, has been picked to do the Swiss Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale. For the pavilion, she will work with composer Alexandre Babel and curator Francesco Stocchi to create a project involving rhythm and sound. The Fully, Switzerland–based artist has won the Prix Marcel Duchamp, France’s top art award, and has appeared in a string of major biennials, including the Sharjah Biennial, the Biennale de Lyon, and others. Echakhch has promised that The Concert , the new installation she is presenting, will distort people’s perception of time and draw on ritual fires. “We want visitors to leave the exhibition with the same feeling they have when they come out of a concert,” she said in a statement. “That this rhythm, those fragments of memory, still echo.”

There still hasn’t been an official announcement for the 2022 Syrian Pavilion, though the Venice Biennale’s website lists these artists as its participants: Saousan Alzubi , Ismaiel Nasra , Adnan Hamideh , Omran Younis , Aksam Tallaa , Giuseppe Amadio , Marcello Lo Giudice , Lorenzo Puglisi , Hannu Palosuo , Franco Mazzucchelli . Emad Kashout  is named as the pavilion’s curator.

As of February, the artist representing Taiwan was still unknown, although it wasn’t always that way. The Taiwanese exhibition—which is technically a collateral event, not a pavilion—became the subject of controversy at the end of 2021 when the artist expected to represent the country, Sakuliu Pavavaljung, began facing allegations that he had sexually assaulted multiple women. Sakuliu, a Paiwan artist born in southern Taiwan, denied the allegations. In 2022, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum said it had officially dropped Sakuliu as its representative at the Biennale, although it didn’t name the artist replacing him. Sakuliu is also expected to show at Documenta 15 in Kassel, Germany, yet the quinquennial said it was awaiting more information about the artist before making a final decision on whether he could participate.

Location: Palazzo delle Prigioni, Castello 4209

For its pavilion, Turkey has selected Füsun Onur to represent the country, and her contribution will be curated by Bige Örer , the director of the Istanbul Biennial and head of contemporary art projects at Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, which is commissioning Turkey’s pavilion this year. Onur is an influential Istanbul-based artist who has been working for over 50 years, and she is best known for her large-scale sculptural installations. During the 1960s, she lived for several years in the United States on a Fulbright scholarship, eventually earning a master’s degree in sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1967. In 2014, Istanbul’s Arter mounted a survey of her work that included early abstract drawings and a number of previously unrealized works. Onur’s work has been included in the 2007 Moscow Biennale, Documenta 13 in 2012, and five iterations of the Istanbul Biennial between 1987 and 2015.

Participating at the Venice Biennale for the first time ever, Uganda has lined up two Kampala-based artists as its inaugural representatives: Acaye Kerunen and Collin Sekajugo . The former deals with gender and labor in Africa in their work, while the latter paints stock imagery to question notions about race. Curated by Shaheen Merali , the show will be titled “Radiance – They Dream in Time.”

Location: Palazzo Palumbo Fossati, San Marco 2597

For his Ukrainian Pavilion, artist Pavlo Makov will continue an ongoing project focused on climate change, with Borys Filonenko , Lizaveta Herman , and Maria Lanko set to curate. Titled Fountain of Exhaustion. Aqua Alta , Makov’s new work will be a 12-tier sculpture made of steel elements that guide the flow of water, making it so that there is a steady stream at the top and just a few drips by the time it reaches the bottom. The curators have promised that this work, focused on the exhaustion of natural resources, will implicitly deal with Ukraine’s current state. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, however, it is unclear whether the pavilion will actually take place. In February, the artist and the curators said they were “not able to continue working on the project of the pavilion due to the danger to our lives.” Shortly afterward, the Biennale promised that it would help the artist and the curators realize the pavilion, which is set to move forward as planned.

United Arab Emirates

Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim will represent the United Arab Emirates at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Ibrahim, who has helped shape the U.A.E.’s contemporary art scene, focuses on the natural landscape in his abstract paintings and sculptures. In his practice, the artist utilizes materials including clay, branches, and rocks. Ibrahim’s work can be found in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Sharjah Art Foundation, and other international institutions. His pavilion, curated by Maya Allison , executive director and chief curator of the New York University Abu Dhabi Art Gallery, will feature new works.

United States

Simone Leigh , one of the most celebrated sculptors working today, became the first Black woman to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale when her pavilion was announced in 2021. Leigh’s work focuses on Black women and resistance, and frequently draws on visual styles traditionally associated with craft, vernacular architecture, and West African art. The details of her pavilion remain somewhat vague, although it’s known it will be called “Sovereignty.” During the Biennale, Rashida Bumbray , the director of the Open Society Foundation, will lead a symposium focused on Black women throughout history. Leigh’s pavilion is being overseen by Jill Medvedow and Eva Respini , the director and chief curator, respectively, of the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, where works from the pavilion will appear in a 2023 survey.

Gerardo Goldwasser , the artist representing Uruguay this year, has frequently turned tailoring as a practice that he considers to be something akin to drawing in three-dimensional space. Subjecting his fabrics to various mathematical systems, he cuts them up and exhibits the results. For the Venice Biennale, he will show new works that envision humans as being similar to machines in a presentation curated by Laura Malosetti Costa and Pablo Uribe .

For its ambitious 2022 pavilion, the Republic of Uzbekistan has selected Abror Zufarov and Charli Tapp , who will take their cues from Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a mathematician who came up with the concept of algorithms and who, according to some, was born in what is now the Uzbek city of Khiva. Organized by Studio Space Caviar and Sheida Ghomashchi , the pavilion will be titled “Dixit Algorizmi – The Garden of Knowledge” and will evolve over the course of its run. It will vaguely resemble a garden, with reflecting pools dividing it into quadrants and a sound installation that will be heard throughout. The Center for Contemporary Arts Tashkent has been enlisted to host workshops on an assortment of topics in tandem with the pavilion.

In 2019, the Venezuelan Pavilion just barely happened on time—representatives for the country were still installing its pavilion just days before the Biennale opened due to protests roiling Venezuela. Venezuela may still be in a dire financial state, but the country is moving forward with its 2022 pavilion, which will include works by Palmira Correa , César Vázquez , Mila Quast , and Jorge Recio under the name “Tierra, País, Casa, Cuerpo” (Land, Country, House, Body). Zacarías García will curate that show.

Among the many pavilions set to challenge the ways in which knowledge is communicated in the West—in history books, records, and more—is Zimbabwe’s, which will take the theme “I did not leave a sign.” Kresiah Mukwazhi , Wallen Mapondera , Terrence Musekiwa , and Ronald Muchatuta will show work at the pavilion organized by Fadzai Veronica Muchemwa .

Location: Santa Maria della Pietà, Calle della Pietà

Home of the Week: A $16 Million Contemporary Jungle Compound Near One of Costa Rica’s Preeminent Surf Communities

‘bodkin’ star robyn cara gets ready for the first gotham tv awards in carolina herrera, best apple deals for june 2024, ai video firm spiideo lands $20m venture capital investment, the best yoga mats for any practice, according to instructors.

ARTnews is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Art Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

An Insider's Guide to the Venice Biennale

Three days in the floating city.

This world-renowned event has helped consolidate Venice’s reputation as one of the leading cities for contemporary art and culture in Europe. The Venice Biennale runs from May to November each year and alternates between art and architecture exhibitions. Attracting half a million visitors, it hosts up to 90 countries in the historic Pavilions scattered across the city. It is considered one of the most prestigious cultural institutions and is responsible for the organisation of the annual Venice Film Festival and Contemporary Music Festival. 

Celebrating groundbreaking artists and pioneering architecture, the Biennale reflects on topical issues in world politics, society and contemporary culture. Each year, the committee sets an overarching theme that contributing countries must respond to, establishing a relationship, however minute, between diverse curatorial visions. 

The Venice Biennale is divided across multiple sites around the city. This guide offers advice on how best to maximise your time between the Arsenale, Giardini and outlying pavilions, as well as a brief history of the institution and our favourite time to visit.

The Arsenale: Photo by Giulio Squillacciotti (Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia)  

125 years of art

Established in 1895, the Venice Biennale was the first of its kind and has been at the forefront of the international art world ever since. Initially housed in the Napoleonic gardens of the Giardini, Belgium was the first country to open a national pavilion in 1907, followed shortly after by Great Britain, Germany and Hungary in 1909.

In the 1930s new festivals in music, cinema and theatre were brought to life. The world’s first Film Festival was founded in Venice in 1932, which still draws famous film stars and directors to the city.

The Biennale has long been a world stage for landmark events, revealing Japanese and Indian cinema to the west for the first time and showcasing major works by the likes of Kusama, Modigliani and Klimt. In 1909 Marinetti dropped his manifesto from the campanile in the Piazza San Marco, giving rise to Italian Futurism. 

Peggy Guggenheim  displayed her modern art collection in 1948, marking the first appearance outside of the USA of a new generation of American painters, including Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. In under twenty years time Pop Art would arrive in Europe with Robert Rauchenberg, marking a shift in the contemporary art scene to America. And in 1993 Hans Haacke made history by smashing the floor of the German Pavilion, built by Hitler in 1938, to pieces. 

The Biennale was expanded to the Arsenale in 1980 before spilling out across the rest of the city. The former naval shipyard of the Venetian Republic now hosts 23 national pavilions, including countries like Italy, China, South Africa and Mexico. 125 years after the first exhibition was held at the Giardini, the prestigious institution is still growing: Ghana, Madagascar, Malaysia and Pakistan participated for the first time in 2019.

The best time to visit the Venice Biennale 

In late August, early September  the most successful directors and actors descend upon the red carpet at Lido di Venezia for the Venice Film Festival , upholding the glamorous status of the city. If you can handle Venice when it’s busy and love cinema, many of the film screenings are open to the public, providing a great opportunity to combine two world-famous events. 

The Festival for Contemporary Music runs later in September, early October , which is not only our favourite time to visit the biennale , it is also one of the best times to experience Venice as a whole.  There tends to be a lull in the number of tourists between the height of summer and Christmas and the temperatures are cool and comfortable without being too cold. A month or so before the Biennale ends, the exhibition spaces are far less busy as well. Enjoy the art or architecture installations at the Giardini by day, followed by dinner at Al Covo and a concert at the Teatro Piccolo at the Arsenale come the evening. Music lovers can take advantage of the fixed subscription ticket which allows entry to five concerts.

Three days in Venice

To appreciate the two main venues at the Biennale, we recommend taking two days to explore each site. It is possible to do both in a day if you are organised, but don’t expect to see everything and be sure to arrive at the Arsenale promptly upon opening at 10 a.m. Bear in mind that both sites close at 6 p.m. and tickets are only valid for one entry. 

That being said, your tickets don’t have to be used immediately — if you are staying in one of our luxury villas near Venice or Verona you could spread these trips out over a week or two. The great thing about the pavilions around the city as well is that these are almost always free to enter so you can make an appearance at any time. 

Day 1 at the Venice Biennale: The Giardini 

There is an overwhelming amount to see at the Biennale so it is always best to check the programme and read pavilion reviews before you visit to see what piques your interest most. If you only have one day in Venice, the Giardini is the smaller and more accessible of the two sites. 

If you are visiting in September or October, wake early and venture into Saint Mark’s Square to watch the sunrise. It is our favourite time of day to experience this iconic cathedral when the Piazza is empty of people. Reserve a table for breakfast at one of the luxury hotels on the Grand Canal or stop for coffee on the Riva dei Setti Martiri before arriving at the Giardini for 10 a.m. Both venues have a main exhibition hall or central pavilion, which is the best place to start. Venture over the bridge to the Padiglione Venezia before making your way around the national pavilions scattered around the park. 

The geometric cafe designed by Tobias Rehberger is a good place to stop for a quick bite if you have limited time, alternatively, try one of the bacari along the Via Giuseppe Garibaldi. For something more memorable, take the vaporetto to the Accademia and enjoy a late lunch at the Enoteca Ai Artisti . 

If you have time, end the day exploring the contemporary art collection divided between the Palazzo Grassi and Punta Della Dogana . 

The Giardini: Photo by Francesco Galli (Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia) 

Day 2 at the Venice Biennale: The Arsenale

Start your visit in the central pavilion, housed in the Arsenale’s Corderie before exploring the installations of South Africa, Peru, Argentina and the UAE in the Sale D’Armi. The site here is vast and this approach will save you continually having to walk back on yourself. There is also a good cafe once you reach the far end, which is ideal for a light lunch after spending all morning on your feet. 

Castello is the largest and furthermost district in Venice so it’s a good idea to prioritise any pavilions in this area if you have time after visiting the Arsenale. Many of the pop-up spaces and collateral events change location each year. For example, in 2019 the Lithuanian Pavilion was held in the nearby Marina Militare, which still belongs to the Arsenal's military zone. A beach was curated inside where holidaymakers sang opera-style performances throughout the day. 

There is no better way to wind down in the evening than with an Aperol Spritz on the Riva degli Schiavoni whilst the sun sets over the Giudecca and lagoon beyond.

The Arsenale: Photo by Andrea Avezzù (Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia) 

Day 3 at the Venice Biennale: The pavilions around Venice  

Each year the biennale hosts a number of collateral events which take place throughout the city in the many museums, palazzi and commercial galleries. Teamed with the many national pavilions held across Venice, there is an overwhelming variety of exhibitions to visit. Start in Santa Croce and Cannaregio before taking the vaporetto across to Dorsoduro and finishing with dinner in San Polo. 

Since there is so much happening in the city, don’t be surprised if you stumble across events and exhibitions you haven’t heard of before. These sometimes are the best places for a quick detour, especially if they are anything like the Icelandic Pavilion on the Giudecca in 2019. The impressive multisensory installation, “ Chromo Sapiens ”, formed a labyrinth from brightly coloured, fuzzy, synthetic hair. 

Recurring venues that are used as exhibition spaces as part of the biennale include the Palazzo Mora and Ca D’Oro in Cannaregio and the Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti overlooking the Ponte dell'Accademia. If you have time, visit the Fondazione Prada’s contemporary exhibition space at the Ca’ Corner della Regina , which also houses the Biennale’s historical archive.

Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the next Art Biennale has been suspended until 2022. The 59th International Art Exhibition will take place from 23rd April to the 27th November and is curated by Cecilia Alemani, the first Italian woman to ever hold the position. In a year that has seen great social and political upheaval, it may be one of the most important biennale’s of our time, so why not plan your trip now .  

Book your luxury villa holiday

All experiences are exclusively available to you when you book a luxury villa in Italy with Tuscany Now & More. Too add on any enriching extras, contact our local Villa Specialists to share your villa shortlist and secure your stay.

(*)Please read this before completing any of our enquiry forms. The information you provide is to facilitate our response to your enquiry, a brochure request or to make a booking. Click here for our Web Privacy Statement for the full details of how your information may be stored and used.

By submitting your information, you agree that Tuscany Now & More may contact you via email or phone with commercial and informational purposes.

There is an option to discontinue direct communication and to do this simply click on this link [email protected] and follow instructions. All payments for bookings are done via a link having a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol. No information regarding credit card or debit card details is held by us.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Receive your Free ‟Tuscany in 10 Minutes Guide”

We respect your privacy. Learn how we handle your details in our Privacy Policy.

Keep in touch with Tuscany Now & More

Get in touch

• Middle East
• Ask a Local
• Get Featured

5 must-see collateral events at the 2022 Venice Biennale 

As April comes to an end, it is time to talk about the 2022 Venice Biennale. It just opened a few days ago and I feel it is already a great success, with many praising the work that the curator Cecilia Alemani did for the main section of the Biennale at Arsenale and Giardini. This year’s Biennale, entitled Il Latte Dei Sogni (The Milk of Dreams), presents 213 artists from 58 countries in the general section alone, not counting all the national pavilions and collateral events spread around Venice. The exhibition, whose title is inspired by the book by Leonora Carrington, “chooses Carrington’s fantastic creatures, along with many other transformation figures, as companions on an imaginary journey through the metamorphosis of the bodies and definitions of the human.”

But apart from the main exhibition itself, it is always a blast to be in Venice during the months of the Biennale. It is not only one of the most important events in the art world, but it is also the occasion for many local and international realities and artists to present their work in the Italian city, making it the real capital of the international art world for 7 months. And with so many events, exhibitions, and pavilions, it is not always easy to choose what to see. 

So, unless you have months or weeks to spend in Venice, to visit every single exhibition or collateral event, we put together a brief guide to the 5 best collateral events to check in Venice during the 2022 Biennale. These are not the best ones, nor the only ones you should visit by any means, but just the exhibitions I wish to visit if I only have a few days to spend in Venice. There are plenty of other official collateral events, that the Venice Biennale has listed  on its website , as well as exhibitions held by private institutions, such as those at the  Peggy Guggenheim Collection  or the Marlene Dumas retrospective at  Palazzo Grassi . 

But, if you want to start somewhere, and you have at least 4 or 5 days to spend in Venice, here are my top picks for this year.  

Anselm Kiefer – Palazzo Ducale

First off my list, the solo exhibition by Anselm Kiefer at Palazzo Ducale is the perfect occasion to enjoy a magnificent art exhibition and take in some history and Venice tradition. Set in the Doge Palace, the opulent palace overlooking San Marco square, the exhibition fills up the Sala dello Scrutinio with massive paintings in the signature Kiefer style. Titled after the writings of the Venetian philosopher Andrea Emo, “Questi scritti, quando verranno bruciati, daranno finalmente un po’ di luce” (These writings, when burned, will finally cast a little light), the exhibition is part of the celebrations for the 1600th Anniversary of the Foundation of Venice. 

The paintings were commissioned and realized specifically for this space, and are inspired by masterpieces hosted in the palace, such as Tintoretto’s or Andrea Vicentino’s. Filled with all sorts of materials and techniques, from real gold to zinc, paint, and found objects, the paintings are a reminder of the stratification and negation that comes with history. And it is rumored that these paintings will be destroyed after the exhibition closes at the end of the year, so hurry up and do not miss the chance to see them. 

Anselm Kiefer.  Questi scritti, quando verranno bruciati, daranno finalmente un po’ di luce (Andrea Emo) On view: from 26 March to 29 October 2022 Doge’s Palace – Sala dello Scrutinio – Piazza San Marco, Venezia Opening hours: every day 9.00 – 18.00

Info, tickets, and reservations: palazzoducale.visitmuve.it

Hermann Nitsch – 20th Painting Action

I get it, not everyone likes Hermann Nitsch and his crude, sometimes unsettling works. But he is, or better was, one of my favorite artists, and his solo exhibition in Venice is definitely a must-see for me. Nitsch recently passed away at the age of 83, just a few days before the opening of this Venice exhibition, but his spirit is intact in the display and set up of his works at Oficina 800 by Zuecca Projects. 

The series, 20th Painting Action, was originally created and presented at the Wiener Secession, Vienna in 1987, and it is today the only painting action to remain in one collection, the Helmut Essl’s private collection and the exhibition marks the first time that the 20th painting action works will be seen together in Italy since their original creation and exhibition.

Drawing upon the ‘Orgies Mysteries Theatre’ concept, that Nitsch developed throughout his career, this series is almost an immersive installation, that will envelop the viewers and bring them to a parallel universe. Less politically correct than most of the other exhibitions you will find in Venice, this exhibition will be a kick in the stomach for some and a mystical experience for many others. Let yourself be surrounded by the works, and pay homage to one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. 

Hermann Nitsch, 20th painting action . Vienna 1987 – Venice 2022 Oficine 800, Fondamenta S. Biagio, Venice On View: April 19 – July 20, 2022 Opening hours: Wednesday to Monday, 10 am – 6 pm Free entry

More info: zueccaprojects.org

Penumbra  – Fondazione In Between Art Film

Shifting from painting to video, the third must-see collateral event in Venice this year is also the first institutional exhibition of Fondazione In Between Art Film. The group exhibition, entitled Penumbra, presents 8 newly commissioned and produced video installations. Hosted in the Ospedaletto and the church of Santa Maria dei Derelitti, the exhibition creates not only a visually impactful experience but also a rather intense one conceptually. 

As explained by the foundation, “The concept of “penumbra” is addressed on two levels: in material terms, the absence of light is the necessary condition for making moving images visible; in metaphorical terms, semi-darkness is interpreted as a threshold or place of transition within which the contours and appearance of things blur together.” 

The exhibition is a fundamental commentary on today’s world, and thanks to the works of the artists involved, it speaks to every language and tackles some of the most pressing issues of our times. Going from one film to the other, you will find yourself questioning your reality, and as in every good exhibition, you will come out with more questions than answers. 

Penumbra  – Fondazione In Between Art Film Complesso dell’Ospedaletto, Castello 6691 – Venice On view: 20 April – 27 November 2022 Opening hours: every day, except on Tuesdays, from 10 am to 6 pm  Free entry

More info: inbetweenartfilm.com

Rony Plesl:  Trees Grow from the Sky

A common theme that seems to connect every art event in Venice during to Biennale is the dialogue between contemporary art and historical landmarks, and this exhibition is no exception. 

Hosted in the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione and among the official collateral events of the 2022 Venice Biennale, the exhibition project by Czech artist Rony Plesl addresses the questions of the essence of human existence and the definition of humanity. It also touches on the relationship between humanity and nature, providing its immediate reflection on multiple layers of meaning. The narrative of the overall concept and site-specific installation of the unique glass artworks revolves around a journey, around seeking our path in the world of today. The realization of the Venice project is a world premiere of the unique technology of glass casting in a global context, allowing the creation of a glass sculpture without any limitations.

Rony Plesl:  Trees Grow from the Sky/ Gli alberi crescono dal cielo Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione, Fondamenta Zattere ai Gesuiti, Venezia On view: April 23 – November 27, 2022 Opening hours: from 23 April to 25 September, 11 am – 7 pm; from 27 September to 27 November, 10 am – 6 pm; closed on Tuesday Free entry

More info: www.ronypleslbiennale.com

Uncombed, Unforeseen, Unconstrained

Last but definitely not least, this group exhibition organized by Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art is yet another official collateral event of the 2022 Venice Biennale. 

The exhibition, hosted by Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello di Venezia in Palazzo Pisani, is curated by Ziba Ardalan and features eleven international contemporary artists, whose presentations align with the phenomenon of entropy, or a measure of disorder. According to the curator, the artists have independently identified and poignantly responded to a number of unfavorable phenomena that, over the past few decades, have increasingly reached a degree of significance in our day-to-day life and environment and within our social and collective history, thus threatening life on planet Earth.

Uncombed, Unforeseen, Unconstrained Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello, San Marco 2810, Venezia On view: April 23 – November 27, 2022 Opening hours: every day, from 10 am to 6 pm, closed on Sunday Free entrance 

More info: parasol-unit.org

Looking for more inspiration and places to visit in Venice? We’ve got what you are looking for here . And if you are visiting Italy for the Biennale, why not check our related articles, like these about Milan , Firenze , Rome or Napoli .

Cover image Giardini (2019) | Photo Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia – Ph. Andrea Avezzu

4 contemporary art galleries in Paris for your next art trip

5 independent art spaces to visit in los angeles.

My 2022 contemporary art travel bucket list 

Closing off 2022. It’s time for Lyon Biennale

2023 Contemporary Art Travel Bucket List

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Latest posts

Contemporary art fairs for spring 2024: gearing up for a great season, the artsy travels guide to the 2024 venice biennale exhibitions, beyond the biennale. 3 magic spots for contemporary art in venice, collaborations & partners.

Join our Newsletter

Email address

Privacy Overview

National Participations Pavilions at the 59th Venice International Art Biennale 2022

Dates of 59th venice international art biennale 2022: from 23rd april to 27th november 2022..

Finland (Aalto)

Great Britain

Grand duchy of luxembourg.

Ivory Coast

North Macedonia

Netherlands

Nordic Countries (Norway Sweden Finland)

Philippines, oman (sultanate of).

Saudi Arabia

South africa.

Switzerland

United Arab Emirates

United States Of America

We've detected unusual activity from your computer network

To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.

Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy .

For inquiries related to this message please contact our support team and provide the reference ID below.

Thanks for reading Hyperallergic!

Enter your email below to subscribe to our free newsletters.

Newsletters

• Daily The latest stories every weekday morning
• Weekly Editors' picks of the best stories each week
• Opportunities Monthly list of opportunities for artists, and art workers

View all newsletters | Privacy Policy

An account has already been registered with this email. Please check your inbox for an authentication link to sign in.

Hyperallergic

Sensitive to Art & its Discontents

Standouts From the 2024 Venice Biennale’s Foreigners Everywhere

Support Independent Arts Journalism

As an independent publication, we rely on readers like you to fund our journalism and keep our reporting and criticism free and accessible to all. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, consider becoming a member today.

VENICE — While biennials have practically metastasized across the globe, the Venice Biennale is the OG — the first ever biennial that launched the whole phenomenon back in 1895. Its success can be seen in the influential biennials that have followed, including the Bienal de São Paulo, the Whitney Biennial, the Gwangju Biennale, and more than a hundred others worldwide.

Unfortunately, in the last few years the curatorial frameworks for biennials are showing signs of fatigue, as introductory texts use generic artspeak that could describe most group exhibitions and provide a thin pretext for curators to show favorite works and artists. But it’s about the art, isn’t it, so curatorial statements be damned. Let’s investigate some of the hundreds of artworks on display as part of the central exhibition at this year’s Biennale, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, the artistic director of the São Paulo Museum of Art, under the theme Foreigners Everywhere . — Hrag Vartanian 

River Claure, Warawar Wawa (2019–2020) and Mita (2022–present)

These beautiful images saturated with dusty colors are visually impressive in the large Arsenale space. The series Warawar Wawa riffs off Saint Exupéry’s 1943 novella Le Petit Prince ( The Little Prince ), which the artist sets in Bolivia, while Mita is a portrait of life in Andean mining communities. The attraction is the balance between the documentary and staged aspects of his imagery, as each photograph appears to be full of cryptic moments or interventions that question our understanding of what we’re looking at. Claure summons magical realism in the everyday and sprinkles it with a dash of artistic sorcery that his camera captures like a firefly in a mason jar for us to scrutinize. — HV

Ana Segovia, “Pos’ se acabó este cantar” (2021) and various paintings

These bright works purport to play with Mexican masculinity in varied ways, but I think they’re just good studies of people, and Segovia’s close-cropped compositions create a tension that works. I don’t think this art has a lot to say about masculinity, beyond the obvious, but she sure has insight into the way bodies relate in space and the sometimes uncomfortable interactions that denote belonging or connection. — HV

Pablo Delano, “The Museum of the Old Colony” (2024)

A fascinating “archival-based conceptual installation” that explores the colonial systems that have subjugated Puerto Rico to more than 500 years of colonial rule since the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1493. Pablo Delano’s biggest obstacle is the sprawling material that gives the display more of a history museum feel. Everything from an official Mattel-approved light-skinned Puerto Rican Barbie doll to images of dark-skinned schoolchildren looking at a painting of Abraham Lincoln in San Juan are included in this dense display. I suspect this project would be better served in a smaller show, as visitors can then take their time to parse the material, but here it feels like a rabbit hole that begs visitors to step in. I look forward to future encounters with the material in different venues. — HV

Nucleo Storico/Portraits display

Over 100 portraits by “artists who worked in Africa, Asia, Latin American, and the Middle East,” according to the label (which seems redundant since the Middle East is part of Asia and Africa), made throughout the 20th century are on display. The Biennale didn’t offer much insight into their interconnectedness, but I still think it’s a fruitful exercise as most visitors will not be that familiar with this history, and it does help to situate much of the figurative painting on display (and there was a lot of it). I do wish more contemporary paintings were placed nearby to allow visitors to make more connections between the material, but I’ll take what we got. — HV

Superflex, “Foreigners Please Don’t Leave Us Alone With The Danes!” (2002)

Sometimes this Danish collective’s sense of humor really hits, and this is one such instance. Sadly, the political realities of Denmark may make this an artifact of a certain time and place, as the country joins the rest of Europe in its increasingly rightward turn , even if it’s in center-left clothing . — HV

Disobedience Archive

What a waste of space: this archive asked visitors to stare at small screens to watch videos that would’ve been a hell of a lot easier to view online. I see this as a gesture that falls empty and I’m tired of bad design and user interfaces being presented in this context, when they’re mostly uninteresting, like these. Skip this, which is a shame considering some good video work is in the mix. — HV

Louis Fratino, “Metropolitan” (2019)

The one-room show by Louis Fratino in the main exhibition makes the case for the artist’s work as a dialogue with a larger history of representation and the “other.” In this painting he showcases the intimate world of a Brooklyn gay bar, which comes across as sweet, lively, and lovingly rendered. The connections you can see between Fratino’s paintings and works by others in the same gallery, including Bhupen Khakhar’s “Fisherman in Goa” (1985) and Filippo de Pisis’s “Nudo maschile (Male nude)” (1927), is a nice touch, but without clear curatorial direction the connections feel more superficial than they were probably intended to be — are they in dialogue? Do they feel a kinship? It’s all very unresolved. Fratino’s “An Argument” (2021) is also a standout, and points to a direction I hope he continues to pursue. Now, if only Fratino would stop painting the same “types” and demonstrate more of the diversity of a community he clearly is a part of. — HV

Lauren Halsey, “keepers of the krown” (2024)

I’ve been conflicted about LA-based artist Lauren Halsey’s work since her rooftop installation at the Metropolitan Museum last year. Repurposing Egyptian or what can be termed “Oriental” imagery and combining it with Hollywood-inspired takes on ancient Egypt, Halsey uses SWANA imagery in much the same way so many other Western artists repurpose it for their own objectives. That history of appropriation may be complicated, but as SWANA people we’re used to having our visuals appropriated by other communities and to seeing its context and intellectual content deracinated — and it can be very frustrating. 

I think Halsey is doing something different, so I continued to ponder what that could be. Last year, I was speaking to artist Shellyne Rodriguez and I brought up the Halsey works, trying to understand how non-SWANA people may understand the images differently. She explained to me, in her deeply pensive way, about how Egyptian imagery is “part of the Black imagination,” and how those visuals, which historically may have been channeled through patriarchal structures, are often a fruitful place for Black Americans to dream. It occurred to me during our conversation that much of the Black diaspora that emerged as the result of the transatlantic Slave trade are often allotted a present without a past, meaning history and a connection to a place they’re “from,” while SWANA people are given the reverse — we are allotted whole curatorial departments without presents, hence the extensive “Near East” and ancient Egyptian departments at museums, which disallow those histories to continue into the present. That strange reversal, which neither group had much to do with creating, sets up a dynamic of conflict, as we saw last year with the bizarre Cleopatra docudrama produced by Jada Pinkett Smith and the anger that resulted on all sides. When one group of people are allotted a history without a present, and another is allotted a present without a past, conflict is sure to arise. — HV

Omar Mismar, “Two unidentified lovers in a mirror” (2023)

This Lebanese artist’s mosaic works are very much of the moment and deal with the complex nexus of time periods, identities, and material realities that Beirut currently represents. When I was in Lebanon in 2019, the market was awash with looted artifacts, including ancient mosaics that resemble the format and style of what Mismar has produced, so that nod to geopolitical realities really works in this series. Using a traditional format to monumentalize moments of heroism, like the men who guarded an archeological museum in Syria during the civil war (“Ahmad and Akram Protecting Hercules,” 2019–20), “Two unidentified lovers in a mirror” (2023) is a beautiful rendering of the layered oppression queer people contend with throughout history. The obfuscation of the tesserae in the faces of the embracing men gives the work a sexual charge that lingers and makes you wonder about what else may be hidden underneath. — HV

Italian Everywhere , by Sofia Gotti and Adriano Pedrosa

What a fascinating idea this is. The curators use Lina Bo Bardi’s celebrated modernist exhibition display structures that were designed for the São Paulo Museum of Art , where Biennale curator Pedrosa is the artistic director, to display works by Italian artists who migrated elsewhere, becoming an integral part of local communities and nations. The suggestion is that by reflecting that migration, Italians will recognize the generosity of other countries that embraced Italians, and reciprocate it, or acknowledge it at the very least. The works themselves are impressive, but in a windowless warehouse — Bo Bardi’s structures were designed for an elevated space with glass walls — they’re sometimes hard to concentrate on. Also, the transparency of the stands and the display grids makes the whole selection feel more like art storage than exhibition. I don’t think the execution works as smoothly as it could have, but I still think this concept is brilliant. Bravo for holding up a mirror to Italian society, while teaching us about Italian heritage worldwide. — HV

Mariana Telleria, “Dios es inmigrante (God Is an Immigrant)” (2017/23) at Giardini

A clear reference to the masts of European ships that helped colonize the Americas, these slender forms also suggest the Christian cross, antennas of some sort, and/or an armature for a larger structure. The sculpture by artist Mariana Telleria was first installed by the port of Buenos Aires, where immigrants would historically enter the country, but this iteration broadens the scope of the piece — and situated here you can’t help but consider Venice’s own naval heritage and its role in looting Constantinople and other realms during its centuries-long reign as a center of global finance and culture. — HV

Yinka Shonibare and Claire Fontaine

Yinka Shonibare’s “Refugee Astronaut VIII” and Claire Fontaine’s “Stranieri Ovunque (Autoritratto), Foreigners Everywhere (Self-portrait)” are paired up as the very the first works visitors see at the Arsenale, the former shipping and naval yard that serves as one of two primary venues for the international exhibition. Both are from 2024 but built from an existing body of work around the theme of foreignness. Fontaine, the name of the collective made up of Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill, has been producing the “Foreigners Everywhere” phrase in neon lights since 2004, which ultimately became the namesake for this year’s Biennale theme. 

Meanwhile, Shonibare’s Refugee Astronaut series comes to life with a 2024 version where the astronauts tote their backpacks of goods directly into the Arsenale. As the artist said in 2019 , “What you have here is a nomadic astronaut just trying to find somewhere that’s still habitable” in the face of climate change. The astronaut installed at the Biennale marches inward from the entrance, as if guiding visitors into the cavernous world of the Arsenale. Most visitors will have paid as much as 30 EUR (about 32 USD) to get in, and it was hard not to see the entrance works in the context of Italy’s efforts to hinder immigration to the country . The use of long-existing art in newly commissioned forms for the Biennale feels like a statement in itself, a reminder that this theme is nothing new — it’s just given new light for the uniquely privileged crowd that is able to visit. — AX Mina

Claire Fontaine, “Stranieri Ovunque (Autoritratto), Foreigners Everywhere (Self-portrait)”

This was one of the most hollow works at the Biennale this year. A banal phrase crafted in neon to make its meaning extra meaningless, like so many neon phrases nowadays (thanks to all the artists who have overused this medium). The fact that this trite work gets any play demonstrates how bankrupt the contemporary art world can be, and that the curator is playing with clichés rather than seeking out something new. And the attempts to intellectualize this slogan to make it seem relevant is truly sad — like you-peaked-in-grad-school-and-think-people-still-care-about-your-intellectualizing-of-other-peoples-pain sad. — HV

Pacita Abad, “Filipinas in Hong Kong” (1995)

Having just seen the late Pacita Abad’s work at Eric Firestone Gallery’s survey of the Godzilla Asian American Arts Network , it was a treat to see “Filipinas in Hong Kong” in person at the Venice Biennale. Hailing from Batanes, Philippines, Abad passed away in 2004. Since then her name and recognition in the art world have only grown, resulting in a celebrated traveling retrospective and catalog . This 1995 work is made of acrylic on stitched and padded canvas. It caught my eye in the way it highlights the vast inequalities of Hong Kong, with brand names like Chanel and Versace up top amid the city’s famous skyscrapers. Down below are the work’s eponymous figures, gathered together to sing, shop, and pass the time.

These are scenes I’ve seen countless times in the city, and it’s a well documented Sunday activity for Filipina domestic workers . “Filipinas” is rich and detailed, and a close look at the stitching makes me want to wrap myself in the world that Abad created. Her recognition in the international art world is long overdue, and I only wish she was alive to celebrate with us. — AXM

Juana Marta Rodas, ceramic miniatures

The late Guaraní ceramicist Juana Marta Rodas studied under her mother and grandmother in traditional methods before developing her own world of whimsical and imaginative creatures. In one pair of untitled miniatures, a little frog-like creature smiles at visitors, while another — resembling a little armadillo with an aardvark head — curls into itself in a protective posture. In her series The Musicians , the figures look like little elves or duende . For most of them, the instruments they play aren’t visible, but I like to imagine they’re holding wind instruments and shakers in their tiny hands. As Paraguayan author Ticio Escobar wrote for the exhibition text, Rodas’s works “reject the large-scale formats of conventional pots.” In a Biennale filled with large, bold statement works, I’d add that the artist has posthumously rejected the large-scale formats of biennial art. These are treasures to crouch down and appreciate. — AXM

Brett Graham, “Wastelands” (2024)

The undulating surface of Brett Graham’s “Wastelands” (2024) initially looked to me like a brain perched atop a wagon, its arms reaching out to viewers. This striking sculpture by the New Zealand artist shows a pātaka , or architectural structure on poles traditionally used by Māori for storage, on wheels to represent movement and migration. The undulations are eels, a traditional food source. 

The title references the 1858 Waste Lands Act , which declared that “it shall be lawful for the Governor in Council from time to time to make and revoke regulations … for the settling of all disputes and differences relating or incident to the sale, letting, disposal, or occupation of the waste lands of the Crown,” among other powers. The act effectively allowed the government to drain wetlands to be used for agriculture, thus destroying traditional swamplands, now legally designated as wastelands, used by Māori. 

With this context in mind, I took a second look at “Wastelands.” The arms began to appear more like an embrace, toward the lands that could be, the eels that feed and nourish the ecosystem, and whatever world we’ve been moving into since 1858. — AXM

Kiluanji Kia Henda, Meditations on Fear (2022)

Among the most beautiful architectural elements in the city of Venice are the window burglar bars, which both protect and, in characteristic Venetian manner, add some style to the homes up and down the canals. Many cities around the world have these bars, including Luanda, the capital of Angola.

Angolan artist Kiluanji Kia Henda’s nine-photo series, titled The Geometric Ballad of Fear , depicts various patterns of fences from around his country atop landscape images. While the photos make an aesthetic statement of their own, they’re best seen in conversation with “A Espiral do Medo” (“The Spiral of Fear”), an iron sculpture composed of actual metal railings from the Angolan capital. They are arranged by height in a spiral, from about knee high to more than six feet tall, with their rust and rot visible. Presented in these forms, it’s easy to notice how the arrangement of shapes in these fences — ovals, diamonds, and circles — serves to aestheticize the literal structural divisions present in Angolan society, and much of the world. — AXM

Bouchra Khalili, Constellations of Migration

At heart, constellations are the way we ascribe meaning to random assortments of stars in the sky. We imagine bears, dragons, and scorpions across a skyscape that existed long before human imagination.

French-Moroccan artist Bouchra Khalili’s The Constellations series creates constellations from migration journeys by refugees and stateless individuals from places like Northern Africa, Southwest Asia, and South Asia. Dotted lines connect cities like Torino, Alicante, and Beni-Mellal, or Milan, Marseille, and Annaba, each of them reflecting movements back and forth and around these continents. The resulting images, rendered as white lines on blue silkscreen, look like star charts. 

By themselves, these illustrations would largely serve to prettify arduous journeys, without allowing visitors to understand the complex series of decisions and chance occurrences that enable such a large geographic spread in the first place. Khalili avoids this trap by presenting eight video interviews she conducted in order to construct these charts, each showing a hand drawing journeys on a map and the stories behind them. Together with the videos, the illustrations remind us that the human world of borders is just as imagined as the constellations in the sky, albeit enforced through laws and militaries. — AXM

Iván Argote, “Paseo” (2022)

The mesmerizing simplicity of Colombian artist Iván Argote’s “Paseo,” which means “a long walk” or “stroll,” references, I believe, an actual decolonial story. In the video work, a statue of Christopher Columbus from Madrid’s Plaza de Colón is placed on the back of a truck and carted around the city. The camera follows from the truck’s cab, giving us a view of the city with the statue at center. It’s an absurd fiction that reminded me of the Columbus statue in Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma , taken down and replaced with a monument to Indigenous women.

I wish the Biennale had included a little more of Argote’s work to better contextualize it, as so much of his oeuvre plays with ideas of monumentality and public space. His Turistas series involved placing Indigenous ponchos on colonial figures in Spanish-colonized cities like Bogotá and Los Angeles, and in his “ Levitate ” project, he replicated the Flaminio Obelisk in Rome’s Piazza del Popolo, installing it sideways on the ground, rather than vertically, and hanging it from two cranes at different angles. — AXM

Bárbara Sánchez-Kane, “Prêt-À-Patria” (2021)

It was surprisingly difficult to photograph “Prêt-À-Patria,” Mexican artist Bárbara Sánchez-Kane’s fiberglass and steel sculpture that leaps forth into the vaunted ceiling of the Arsenale. Three figures lined up in military dress march upward, with a golden flagpole that joins them passing from anus to mouth to create a towering sculpture. The title plays with the French prêt-à-porter , or ready-to-wear, and the Spanish-language word patria , which means homeland. In so doing, it makes a clear statement about military, land, and power.

As I circled the work, I realized why it was so hard to photograph: it can’t be viewed from a single angle. When approached directly, the figures look flayed or impaled, gazing upward to the heavens. From the side, they look more like a human caterpillar, ready to learn and consume in hierarchical fashion. A circular red carpet adds a touch of elegance to the work, but also creates a natural boundary that prevents visitors from getting too close to it — without this boundary, I can only imagine how many people would be adding themselves at the bottom of the sequence of figures, joining in the feast. — AXM

Aravani Art Project, “Diaspore” (2024)

“Diaspore,” the luminous mural peeking through columns at the Arsenale, immediately caught my eye from far away. In bold, bright colors, trans feminine figures intermix with flowers, plants, and abstract shapes that capture tremendous positive energy and the spirit of transitioning and working across gender. The mural is produced by Aravani Art Project, an art collective with transgender and cisgender women at the helm that focuses on creating public art for trans communities in India . Because of the specific architecture of the building, it’s not actually possible to see the mural in full. It wraps in a gentle curve at a section of the Arsenale supported by multiple columns, which means viewers need to move and navigate through the piece to fully experience it. 

Having seen photos of the Aravani Art Project’s murals in India, where community is such a key focus, I was left wondering who this mural is for, tucked away as it is in the confines of the Biennale venue — but I was also so glad to see it, as one of the few explicitly trans works in the international exhibition. As the collective writes in an online statement, “The visibility of the transgender figure has begun to disrupt long-held beliefs about gender and the ways we organize our lives around categories of gender.” — AXM

Karimah Ashadu, “Machine Boys” (2024)

In 2022, the city of Lagos banned okada , or motorcycle taxis, out of safety concerns. At the same time, it left thousands of drivers out of work . Karimah Ashadu, trained as a painter, developed “Machine Boys” to bring us into the world of okada drivers. The film is shot like scenes from The Fast and the Furious , with close-ups of the bikes and men riding in circles and figure eights while revving their engines. While ostensibly a study of masculinity and patriarchal expectations, it also centers precarity. “I’ve financed my education to higher institution,” says one rider, pointing to the revenue made possible by this line of work. “I am my own boss,” says another, using the oft-cited reason for going into freelance and independent work. In just under nine minutes, the film offers only a small glimpse into these men’s lives and motivations, but in so doing, it shares a perspective on okada that merges identity, gender, and livelihood. — AXM

Charmaine Poh, “What’s softest in the world rushes and runs over what’s hardest in the world ” (2024)

The delicate cinematography of Singapore artist Charmaine Poh’s 14-minute film is a tender examination of queer family in a country with changing laws and norms around LGBTQ+ identity . Poh’s film largely focuses on hands — hands holding little toes, hands kneading dough. These lyrical images are mixed with the realities of trying to raise a family without legal recognition — what happens if one parent dies, and the other is not legally a parent to their child?

It wasn’t until 2022 that Singapore’s parliament decriminalized sex between men , but it issued a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual norms. “I definitely consider starting a family as a queer person to be an act of resistance,” the narrator says. “We just didn’t know the method to do it.” Poh shows the possibilities of queer and intergenerational family even under these limiting conditions, while leaving unresolved the future for families without the legal protections that marriage affords. — AXM

• Share Copied to clipboard

Hrag Vartanian

Hrag Vartanian is editor-in-chief and co-founder of Hyperallergic. More by Hrag Vartanian

AX Mina is a wandering artist and culture writer exploring contemporary spirituality, technology and other sundry topics. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times and Places Journal, and... More by AX Mina

Leave a comment

You must be a Member to post a comment. Sign in or become a member now .

Most Popular

• 10 Art Shows to See in NYC This June
• UArts Students and Staff Rally After Abrupt Closure Announcement
• UArts President Resigns Amid Anger Over School’s Closure
• Opportunities in June 2024

French Authorities Charge Artist Who Tagged “MeToo” on Courbet

Activists Decry “Show of Force and Violence” at Brooklyn Museum Protest

The museum acknowledged that “the police brutality that took place was devastating” but said it did not call the NYPD.

Azerbaijan’s Destruction of Armenian Heritage in Artsakh Continues Unabated

Satellite imagery analyses yield evidence of the demolition of a church, cemetery, and an entire village in the last seven months as experts warn of “cultural genocide.”

Scrimshaw Takes Over the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Summer Exhibitions

The Wider World & Scrimshaw and Shinnecock artist Courtney M. Leonard’s BREACH: Logbook 24 | SCRIMSHAW explore sites of encounter and exchange across the Pacific and Arctic Oceans.

Katherine Bradford Is Just Getting Started

“I don’t think anybody believed I could be an artist,” the 82-year-old painter told Hyperallergic in an interview.

Hildegard von Bingen’s Eternal Garden

The 12th-century mystic continues to attract devotees among both Catholic clergy and New Age gurus, Christian traditionalists and radical feminists.

Black Mountain College Prize Awarded to Alison Croney Moses

Each year, Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center awards a $20,000 grant to an artist based anywhere in the world working in the spirit of BMC.

Maia Ruth Lee’s Art of Movement and Memory

Mirroring the work of her linguist parents, Lee crafts a visual language to communicate her diasporic experience with tension and tenderness.

Linda Mussmann Prefers the Hard Work to the Parade

The artist speaks to Hyperallergic about founding an art space in Upstate New York and being among the first in the state to marry a same-sex partner.

Rhode Island School of Design Opens RISD Grad Show 2024

The annual creative showcase highlights MFA student work representing 19 disciplines in an exhibition and digital publication.

Deborah De Robertis decried the charges of theft and property damage, which she called “disproportionate.”

Where Carnal Needs Meet Unearthly Setting

Xingzi Gu broadcasts memory-mined configurations of lovers and strangers via ethereal depictions of energies, moods, and emotions.

We've recently sent you an authentication link. Please, check your inbox!

Sign in with a password below, or sign in using your email .

Get a code sent to your email to sign in, or sign in using a password .

Enter the code you received via email to sign in, or sign in using a password .

Subscribe to our newsletters:

• Podcast Updates on the latest episodes
• Store Updates & special offers from our store
• Film Film reviews and recommendations
• Books Book reviews and recommendations
• Los Angeles Weekly guide to exhibitions in LA
• New York Weekly guide to exhibitions in NYC

Sign in with your email

Lost your password?

Try a different email

Send another code

Sign in with a password

Privacy Policy

Venice Biennale 2022: the must-see pavilions in the Arsenale

From a gauguin impersonation to fire raining from the sky, here are the best exhibitions in the city's former shipyards.

A detail of Ayman Baalbaki's Janus Gate (2021), on show at the Lebanese Pavilion Photo: Federico Vespignani © LVAA

Lebanese Pavilion

The World in the Image of Man, Danielle Arbid and Ayman Baalbaki

The installations on show in the Lebanese Pavilion reflect the never-ending chaos afflicting the Middle Eastern country, which has collapsed both economically and politically. Arbid’s split-screen video, Allô Chérie (2022), is stopping visitors to the Arsenale in their tracks—what is this sinister car chase around Beirut and why is the woman who narrates the piece constantly chasing down money? “The voice in the film is my mother’s,” Arbid tells The Art Newspaper . “I installed a spying machine in her mobile phone with her consent. I thought she had a very quiet life but then discovered she had a secret and was running her own banking system.”

The frenzied, desperate audio recording was made three years ago but the video piece was put together this year, gaining significance following the huge explosion in the port of Beirut in August 2020, which left more than 200 people dead. “Lebanon has so many money problems,” Arbid says. Baalbaki’s two-sided installation, Janus Gate (2021), reinforces the idea of a fragmented city; one side is covered in alluring neon lights and spray-painted tarpaulins while a disconcerting hut filled with detritus sits behind the tawdry façade, illustrating eloquently and forcefully the “two faces” of Beirut.

Courtesy of Turba Tol and Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage of Chile © Ugo Carmeni

Chilean Pavilion

Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol, various artists and researchers

What is it like to be lowered into the depths of a peat bog? The Chilean Pavilion recreates the journey as visitors are led onto a circular platform surrounded by a translucent screen onto which is projected footage of the descent into the squelchy belly of a peat bog.

All around is live wet moss, the smell of which hits you even before you enter the pavilion. A soundtrack makes the floor tremble as tribal chants, guttural noises and high-pitched whoops fill the air. As you re-emerge into the daylight, figures dance a ring around you.

But all this theatre has a serious point—understanding and, more importantly, conserving peat bogs is essential if we are to successfully mitigate rising CO2 emissions caused by human activities. According to the presentation's organisers, peat bogs “absorb more carbon than forests, a capability that makes these wetlands one of the most valuable ecosystems on the planet”.

These lands, in this case situated on the southern tip of South America in Patagonia, are also of cultural importance. Here they have been home to the indigenous Selk’nam people for eight millennia. And they will need to continue to exist if we are to have any hope of human existence on this planet for many more millennia. (For more about peat bogs and Selk'nam culture, visit the pavilion’s fascinating website. )

Venice Biennale 2022: the must-see pavilions in the Giardini

Installation view of Herbert Rodríguez's Peace is a Corrosive Promise , in the Peruvian Pavilion Photo courtesy of the Peruvian Pavilion

Peruvian Pavilion

Peace is a Corrosive Promise, Herbert Rodriguez

Herbert Rodriguez was once a studious fine art student at the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Lima, Peru. But, at the age of 21, he quit and disappeared into the shadows of the Subterráneos. Throughout the 1980s, the young artist made the underground of Lima his gallery, working amidst new collectives like Artistas Visuales Asociados and the Las Bestias group.

The work on show in Venice responds to the realities of Peru’s new democracy, one born from the ashes of a 12-year junta rule. The title of the exhibition, Peace is a Corrosive Promise, reflects the authoritarianism, terrorism and unrelenting violence that often defined Peru’s early attempts at democracy, as warring factions battled for power and supremacy.

Rodriguez is the sole representative of Peru in its pavilion, and this is one of the first times the artist has been significantly recognised by the established Western art world. But this is not fine art, it’s punk. Rodriguez has always remained disinterested in the gallery system. His work is fungible and raw; throwaway agit-prop made for the street. The work on show in Venice is printed on cheap, mass-produced paper; as it was in Lima in the 1980s.

The works are direct to the point of lurid—collages shaped to resemble a penis, filled with photographs taken from porn magazines cut and shaped to tesselate with documentary images of conflict, or interspersed with headlines reporting political violence taken from newspapers.

But the intent is clear. One work repurposes text from an Amnesty International report, dating to October 1983, which detailed torture, disappearances and executions in the Peruvian capital. Rodriguez transforms the dry, technical text into a loud graphic animation.

An installation view of Yuki Kihara's Paradise Camp in the New Zealand Pavilion Photo: Luke Walker

New Zealand Pavilion

Paradise Camp , Yuki Kihara

With wit and verve, Yuki Kihara reworks the problematic Polynesian paintings of Paul Gauguin to centre members of Samoa’s “third gender” community, the Fa’afafine, including herself. A culturally recognised group in Samoan society for generations, Fa’afafine are people who were assigned male at birth but who express their gender in a feminine way.

When Kihara first saw Gauguin’s paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2008, she was struck by the resemblance between the semi-nude Tahitian women he depicted and her Fa’afafine friends. Revisionist research by the Maori scholar Ngahuia Te Awekotuku has even suggested that Gauguin’s models were Mahu, members of Tahiti’s “third gender”.

These were the twin inspirations behind Kihara’s Paradise Camp project, dissecting the painter’s erotic and exotic images of a “paradise” island, and re-enacting them as celebratory portraits of Samoan queer culture. This triumphant photographic series, sized to match Gauguin’s original paintings, covers two walls of the pavilion.

Meanwhile, Kihara literally confronts Gauguin head on in a video that imagines a conversation between the 19th century painter—Kihara transformed herself via prosthetics and a fake moustache—and her actual self as an empowered Fa’afafine and artist. Rather than rejecting his work out of hand, she informs him that she is merely “upcycling” the paintings into “something far more fabulous”.

Arcangelo Sassolino's Diplomazia Astuta in the Maltese Pavilion Photo: Agostino Osio, Alto Piano

Maltese Pavilion

Diplomazia Astuta (Cunning Diplomacy), Arcangelo Sassolino, Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci and Brian Schembri

Entering the Maltese Pavilion is a little like coming upon the final moments of a biblical storm of fire and brimstone. Drips of actual molten steel drop down into seven square water tanks, each representing the figures in Caravaggio’s The Beheading of St John the Baptist (1608). A complex system is hidden in the installation’s ceiling, feeding a loop of steel through an induction system that heats it to 1,500°C before it drips down, like a miniature ball of liquid fire, before fizzing out in the water.

Beyond the molten metal and tubs is a vast solid steel plate, the same size as Caravaggio’s canvas and on the reverse of which are inscribed biblical texts. The curatorial blurbs bring several themes to the table, from allegories of “the continuous cycle of agency and loss” to overlaying the “noetic onto the metaphysical”. But usurping these intricate—and sometimes overcomplicated—narratives and concepts is the primordial wonder (the “maravilla” as co-curator Keith Sciberras puts it) of entering a room and seeing fire raining from the sky.

Gian Maria Tosatti's History of Night and Destiny of Comets for the Italian Pavilion Courtesy of DGCC - MiC

Italian Pavilion

History of Night and Destiny of Comets , Gian Maria Tosatti

At the far end of the Arsenale lies the cavernous Italian Pavilion, a 2,000 sq. m space that dwarfs many other national pavilions put together. Here Gian Maria Tosatti, the first solo artist ever selected to show in this enormous blank canvas , has found the perfect foil for his site-specific environmental installations.

Waiting in a queue outside, visitors are instructed to enter one at a time and to remain silent inside the pavilion, so as to preserve the immersive experience. Do not be discouraged by these rules, or the work’s grandiose title: Tosatti has orchestrated a true transformation that is heightened by the atmosphere of hushed reverence.

A theatre of Italy’s industrial decline unfolds through a sequence of warehouse spaces filled with old machines and riggings sourced from abandoned factories—relics from a bygone era of productivity and prosperity. They are punctuated by an eerie domestic interior, with multiple doors to nowhere and the ghost of a crucifix on the wall behind an empty bed. The labyrinthine tour comes to a waterlogged finale that could be read as annihilation, were it not for the distant lights piercing the darkness—a sign of hope for humanity in the face of climate catastrophe, according to the artist.

• Skip to Content
• Accessible Browsing Information

News Center

Art & Art History Department Chair invited to participate in a prestigious international art show

“It’s a thing you get in the art world,” McGrath said. “The curator said she saw my work in Denmark last summer and invited to show in their biennial international art show in Venice.  She contacted me totally out of the blue. When I realized it was real, I was obviously honored, and then of course, I freaked out.”

McGrath will be showing her work at the 8 th edition of the European Cultural Centre (ECC)’s biennial contemporary art exhibition, “Personal Structures,” which will run from April 10 through November 24 in 2026 in parallel to the Venice Biennale. McGrath plans to start working on the exhibition in 2025.

The road to the Venice exhibition actually began a few years ago in another European country – Denmark - where McGrath was an artist-in-residence in the summer of 2022. McGrath’s mother grew up in Denmark and the family was planning a visit in 2019, so McGrath researched and contacted Viborg ceramicist Helle Bovbjerg, who is also an art critic in Copenhagen.

Through Bovbjerg, McGrath became part of a program in which artists are invited to come use a huge paper factory as an art space.

“I do a lot of site-specific temporary installations that are super large scale,” McGrath said. “I enjoy the freedom of being able to work conceptually that teaching for a living allows me.”

McGrath took three CSUCI Art Dept alumni with her to Denmark and created a series of installations with local - predominately unfired - clay. McGrath had a solo exhibition that summer, and the curator of the European Cultural Centre show was impressed, and contacted McGrath about participating in the 2026 show.

“I know it will be large scale,” McGrath said. “I’m going to see if the factory in Denmark can ship materials to me.”

The “Personal Structures” show will be on display in the exhibition venues of Palazzo Bembo, Palazzo Mora and Marinaressa Gardens in Venice and will run concurrently with the 61 st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.

More recently, McGrath was one of five CSUCI artists chosen for Museum of Ventura County’s “Innovision: Ventura County Artists to Watch” exhibition, which opens Saturday, June 8 and will run for one year. The exhibition opening, that is free and open to the public, will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. on Saturday evening at the museum, located at 100 E. Main Street in Ventura.

To learn more about the upcoming “Innovision” exhibition, visit https://venturamuseum.org/event/exhibition-opening-masters-and-innovision/ .

To see examples of Marianne McGrath’s work, visit https://www.mariannemcgrath.com/ .

Venice Biennale 2024: Your Guide to Unmissable Artists, Exhibitions, and Events

Set to begin on April 20, 2024, here's a list of artists, exhibitions, and events to keep your eye on for the 60th Venice Biennale art festival. 

Related Articles

Every Met Gala Theme Ever

From 1971 to now, we're taking a look at all of the different themes.

Travel & Living

The ultimate french girl guide to visiting paris.

All that's left to plan are your outfits.

Fashion Week

Pfw: all the best looks from the runways.

As Paris Fashion Week unfolds, the runway is ablaze with unmissable looks that capture the essence of the season.  

Recommended posts for you

Film & TV

Which celebrities are celebrating a first father's day in 2024.

Raise a glass to all the new celebrity fathers this year.

The Best Summer Foundations Promise A Glowing, Flawless Finish

From the best foundation with SPF to the best sweatproof skin tint, these cosmetics will set an untouchable first layer for all of your summer makeup looks.

5 Authors Talk Their Highly-Anticipated Summer Books

Sun, sand, book in your hand. Five authors from a wide variety of genres—memoir, romance, thriller, and biography—discuss their hotly anticipated summer books

The Best Beach Chairs For Relaxing Summer Days

With these comfy beach chairs you'll be off of the sand and into a book by noon.

Our 2024 Fathers Day Gift Guide Has Everything Dad Needs for Summer Style

With Father's Day around the corner, L'OFFICIEL has compiled a diverse list of gifts to make this Father's Day unforgettable!

Pop culture

June 2024 horoscopes — what's in store for each sign.

June promises to be a month to remember for all signs, especially for Gemini, Taurus, and Sagittarius. Love, work, and luck: here are the monthly astrological predictions for all zodiac signs.

The Best New Beauty Products to Shop in June 2024

Get excited for the latest and greatest in beauty this month. Here are the latest beauty launches try in June 2024. 

6 Times Apple Martin Twinned With Her Mom, Gwyneth Paltrow

  L'OFFICIEL rounds up all the best twinning moments from the famous mother-daughter duo. 

Your are here

La biennale di venezia.

60th International Art Exhibition Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere 20 April > 24 November, 2024 Buy online

52nd International Theatre Festival Niger et Albus 15 > 30 June 2024 Buy online

18th International Festival of Contemporary Dance We Humans 18 July > 3 August 2024 Buy online

68th International Festival of Contemporary Music Absolute Music 26 September > 11 October 2024 Buy online

Art, Architecture, Cinema, Dance, Music, Theatre, Historical Archives of Contemporary Arts, College, etc etc...

• The Organization
• Environmental sustainability

Departments

• Architecture
• Historical Archive
• Biennale Channel
• Biennale Educational
• Sponsorship
• Biennale Noticeboard
• Environmental Sustainability
• Working with us
• Biennale College
• Introduction by Pietrangelo Buttafuoco
• Introduction by Roberto Cicutto
• Introduction by Adriano Pedrosa
• Biennale College Arte
• National Participations
• Venice Pavilion
• Collateral Events
• Biennale Sessions
• Submissions
• When and where
• Accreditation
• Services for the public
• How to get there
• Introduction by Carlo Ratti
• Space for Ideas
• National participations procedure
• Collateral Events procedure
• Biennale College Architettura
• Regulations
• Submitting a film
• Technical specifications
• Venice Production Bridge
• Biennale College Cinema
• Permanent activities
• Dates and deadlines
• Performances
• Introduction by Wayne McGregor
• Biennale College Danza
• Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement
• Silver Lion
• Introduction by Lucia Ronchetti
• Biennale College Musica 2024
• Biennale Musica 2023 - Micro-Music (Video)
• A photo reportage by Frankie Casillo (2023)
• Introduction by ricci/forte
• Biennale College Teatro
• Presentation
• Biennale Library
• Exhibitions and activities
• Activities and panels
• Virtual Exhibitions
• Collections
• Biennale College ASAC
• When & where

Ca’ Giustinian, San Marco 1364/A 30124 Venice Tel. +39 041 5218711 email [email protected]

Press Office info and contact persons: Art, Architecture / Cinema / Dance, Music, Theatre Ca’ Giustinian, San Marco 1364/A, Venice

Press Office

Subscribe to the Newsletter and get the latest info on our programmes and initiatives.

Follow us on

• Note Legali

© La Biennale di Venezia 2023 - All website contents are copyright protected P.I.00330320276

Aerospace Gondola at Venice Biennale Arte 2024

Courtesy of Valentina Sumini

Courtesy of Valentina Sumini

• Space Exploration Initiative
• Media Lab Research Theme: Cultivating Creativity

The gondola, a timeless and iconic symbol of Venice and love, embarks on a new journey at the Venice Biennale Arte 2024 ( https://www.labiennale.org/it/arte/2024  ) in the Pavilion of the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The Aerospace Gondola project is a collaborative video artwork by artist Marco Nereo Rotelli, MIT SEI’s Space Architect Valentina Sumini, Visual Designer Pietro Grandi, 3D designer Antonio Alfano, geophysicist Paolo Dell’Aversana, and poet Gemma Bracco.

Strategically placed at the water gate of the exhibition space at San Stae facing Canal Grande, this site-specific video piece symbolizes a vision and transition between land and water, encapsulating the core theme of the artwork. Rotelli transforms the water gate into a non-place, a threshold to the visible cosmic infinite, through a golden window. Through this window, viewers witness the poetic journey of a gondola flying from Venice to Bangladesh and passing by the Moon, serving as a metaphorical portal that bridges terrestrial and celestial realms.

The project stands on a foundation of art, science, and space architecture, using poetry to weave a communicative thread between diverse dimensions: earth and space, finite and infinite, interior and exterior, contemporary and historical, and future realms. Rotelli’s work often centers on the gondola as a powerful poetic metaphor, a theme he has explored in various prestigious exhibitions. From "Fluendo verso", exhibited at the Rome Quadriennale (1996), to "Clean Water, please", showcased at the Museum of the Military Navy of Venice, Milan Design Week, and the Biennale of Sustainability in Genoa (2022), Rotelli has consistently deepened his engagement with the gondola's symbolic and poetic potential. His collaboration with the Volunteer Diver Gondoliers of Venice further solidifies this union of intent.

The Aerospace Gondola, digitally designed with the expertise of Valentina Sumini, leverages artificial intelligence and computational design to reimagine the Venetian gondola as a fantastical space vehicle. This innovative project blends traditional symbolism with cutting-edge technology, reimagining space travel through a shield of golden stars and water. It aims to recreate the overview effect, reconnecting humanity to our planet Earth by exploring the lunar surface and applying this acquired knowledge upon returning to Bangladesh. This immersive experience merges all levels of our experiential and non-experiential world. Poetry becomes a universal medium that not only unites hearts and minds but also bridges diverse realms. Through this transformative journey, viewers are invited to reflect on the interconnectedness of our world and the limitless possibilities of human creativity and exploration.

Research Topics

Mark Bradford: Transcendent abstract artist

• Show more sharing options
• Copy Link URL Copied!

Mark Bradford got a late start as an artist. A former hairstylist, he didn’t begin to work with serious determination until he was 30, when he enrolled as a painting student at CalArts in Valencia. His first exhibition to gain widespread traction waited until he was 40; “ Freestyle ,” a 2001 group show of American artists proposed the emergence of “post-Black art,” work that inevitably encompassed Black experiences (and, in Bradford’s case, queer experiences as well), but insisted that it not be ghettoized by race or sexuality. Much the same way that Black history is American history, Black art is American art.

Discover the change-makers who are shaping every cultural corner of Los Angeles. This week we bring you The Creators, who are leaving their mark in film, art, music and more. Come back each Sunday for another installment.

Now 62, Bradford ranks among the top artists to have emerged in — and defined — American art in the 21st century. Recently he surprised many with a new sculpture, “Death Drop 2023,” a 10-foot man sprawled on the floor, his pose lodged somewhere between a joyful, gay ballroom-culture dance move and a gruesome murder victim. It plays against Bradford’s achievement of having revived dormant abstract painting in a time dominated by figurative imagery.

His sway stems from far more than multimillion-dollar sales in an overheated art market, although a $12-million auction of his monumental canvas “Helter Skelter,” a 34-foot-wide meditation on the race war Charles Manson envisioned starting, is nothing to sneeze at.

Bradford’s U.S. representation at the 2017 Venice Biennale is more to the point. He opened the five-room exhibition with a bulbous, abstract painted sculpture suspended from the ceiling that nearly filled the space. Evoking a bodily tumor, the ugly mass crowded visitors against the walls.

Bradford titled his show “Tomorrow Is Another Day,” the cringey line spoken by Vivien Leigh’s weepy Scarlett O’Hara at the melodramatic close of “Gone With the Wind.” Her remark minimized a brutal history of white supremacy while auguring its endurance. The Oscar-laden romantic fantasy launched a thousand pop culture satires, while Bradford marshaled the gay dialect of camp in defense of moral seriousness.

Building on the found-object aesthetic of L.A. predecessors such as Noah Purifoy, who made assemblages out of the charred remnants of the 1965 Watts riots, Bradford also constructs paintings from canvases densely layered with street signage scavenged from fences, telephone poles and urban walls in South Los Angeles, where he was born and works today. And the MacArthur Fellowship winner, who also won this year’s $500,000 Getty Prize, helped open Art + Practice, an exhibition space in Leimert Park.

Since the start of the Black Lives Matter movement, museums have focused on contemporary art’s presentation of Black figures, but Bradford’s internationally acclaimed work demonstrates the continuing power of abstraction.

More to Read

Review: Queer Black women shine at timely museum shows by Mickalene Thomas and Simone Leigh

June 1, 2024

Review: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio sculpture will forever change how you see L.A.’s sidewalk ficus trees

May 22, 2024

Frank Stella, minimalist painter and sculptor, dies at 87

May 4, 2024

Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for criticism (he was a finalist for the prize in 1991, 2001 and 2007). In 2020, he also received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Art Journalism from the Rabkin Foundation.

Christina House is a staff photojournalist with the Los Angeles Times. She officially joined the visual journalism team in 2017 after 10 years as a freelance photographer. House grew up in Long Beach and is a graduate of Cal State Fullerton. Her love for photography started when she visited the Philippines, her mother’s native country, at age 7. That unforgettable experience inspired her to pick up a camera. House won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography and the 2022 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Domestic Photography for “Hollywood’s Finest,” an intimate look into the life of a pregnant 22-year-old woman living on the street. She received the 2021 Cliff Edom New America Award and was honored in the portrait series category for her work on “Game Changers: A Celebration of Women in Sports” from the 2021 National Press Photographers Assn.’s Best of Photojournalism awards.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Entertainment & Arts

After the trauma of sexual assault comes the healing of ‘Fire and Blue Sky’ at L.A. Opera

June 5, 2024

Review: Imperfect, yes, but ‘Jelly’s Last Jam’ is still wildly entertaining in Pasadena revival

June 4, 2024

How architect Frederick Fisher is helping transform L.A.’s Natural History Museum

Janis Paige, enduring ‘Silk Stockings’ star from Hollywood’s Golden Age, dies at 101

June 3, 2024