The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia , titeld In Minor Keys by Koyo Kouoh, features 100 National Pavilions located in the Arsenale, Giardini and around the city of Venice. The PhotoPhore’s editors selected the not-to-be-missed National Pavilions of Biennale Arte 2026.
National Pavilions to see, selected by The PhotoPhore
AUSTRIA
Seaworld Venice
Curator: Nora-Swantje Almes
Exhibitor: Florentina Holzinger
Venue: Giardini
The Austrian choreographer and performance artist Florentina Holzinger will represent Austria at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia with SEAWORLD VENICE, a bold new interdisciplinary commission, curated by Nora-Swantje Almes (Gropius Bau, Berlin). Known for her genre-defying work that challenges socio-political conventions, Holzinger uses her long-standing research into the element of water—as both subject and symbol—to explore the human body in a radically changing landscape, in which nature and technology collide. The project will feature a permanent live installation and performances at the Austrian Pavilion, alongside site-specific Études across Venice and its lagoon.
BRAZIL
Comigo ninguém pode
Curator: Diane Lima
Exhibitors: Rosana Paulino, Adriana Varejão
Venue: Giardini
Artists Rosana Paulino and Adriana Varejão are part of the curatorial project Comigo ninguém pode — the Portuguese name of the plant Dieffenbachia that also resonates as a popular saying, which can be understood as “nobody can handle me” or “nobody can beat me.” The title draws on these ambiguities as a metaphor for protection, toxicity, and resilience. The proposal highlights the dialogues that run through the careers of both artists, in which reflections on colonial wounds and the rewriting of history give way to constant processes of metamorphosis, articulating new possibilities for imagination and poetic liberation.
BULGARIA
The Federation of Minor Practices
Curator: Martina Yordanova
Exhibitors: Gery Georgieva, Maria Nalbantova, Rayna Teneva, Veneta Androva
Venue: Sala Tiziano at Centro Culturale Don Orione Artigianelli, Fondamenta Delle Zattere Ai Gesuiti 919
The Bulgarian Pavilion is conceived as the headquarters of a fictional research lab operating within a post sovereign, care oriented political imagination known as The Federation of Minor Practices. Positioned slightly ahead of the present, the Pavilion looks back at the early twenty first century as the moment when the conditions for this formation first became visible. The near past of this formation is presented through four films.
DENMARK
Things to Come
Curator: Chus Martínez
Exhibitor: Maja Malou Lyse
Venue: Giardini
The exhibition will explore how different image and value systems—science, fiction, and pornography—collaborate in shaping visions of the future, introducing a grounded, real-world dimension to public discourse through the paradoxical entanglement of fertility science and erotic imagery. The project will reflect Lyse’s media-conscious practice exploring sexuality, power, and representation in the digital age, alongside Martínez’s curatorial ethos rooted in care, criticality, and dialogue.
GRAND DUCHY OF LUXEMBOURG
La Merde
Curator: Stilbé Schroeder, Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain
Exhibitor: Aline Bouvy
Venue: Arsenale
Aline Bouvy presents La Merde, an immersive audiovisual installation commissioned for the Luxembourg Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The work brings together a film, a spatialized sound composition, and a mirror-glassed steel architecture that reorganizes the viewer’s position in space, both physically and socially. At its core is a cinematographic essay structured as a manifesto: La Merde addresses shame as a social mechanism and traces the thresholds through which bodies are classified, tolerated, disciplined, or pushed out of view. It proposes a reflection on the systemic violence that shapes lives and behaviors.
GREECE
ESCAPE ROOM
Curator: George Bekirakis
Exhibitor: Andreas Angelidakis
Venue: Giardini
The Greek Pavilion at the Giardini in Venice is transformed into a contemporary Platonic Cave by Andreas Angelidakis, the visual artist and architect representing Greece with the work Escape Room, from May 9 to November 22, 2026. The iconic Platonic allegory is reactivated as an immersive, inhabitable environment, situated within the era of post-truth and the rise of nationalist populism in the work of this internationally active creator.
IRELAND
Dreamshook
Curator: Georgina Jackson and The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art
Exhibitor: Isabel Nolan
Venue: Arsenale
Dreamshook emerges from Isabel Nolan’s examination of the fifteenth-century Venetian printer Aldus Manutus and his creation of the paperback. Through enigmatic sculpture, radiant paintings, drawings and writing, Nolan makes manifest the human experience of orienting oneself within the vast and turbulent universe. The artist work varies from monumental to intimate in scale, allowing the audience to vacillate between wonder and unease, and grounding us in the artist’s question of “how to love a tumultuous world, an indifferent universe, and humans that are so often awful to each other.”
JAPAN
Grass Babies, Moon Babies
Curators: Lisa Horikawa, Mizuki Takahashi
Exhibitor: Ei Arakawa-Nash
Venue: Giardini
Grass Babies, Moon Babies creates an immersive journey activated by visitors through acts of care and movement. Upon entering the Pavilion, visitors are invited to hold and carry one of 200 baby dolls through the Pavilion’s pilotis, gardens, and interior spaces. Visitors participate in a final act of collective care by changing the dolls’ diapers and activating a QR code that delivers a “diaper poem” based on each baby’s assigned birthday. These birthdays are shaped at the intersection of the artist’s intimate, personal experiences and the long arc of historical and social forces within and beyond Japan.
KAZAKHSTAN (REPUBLIC OF)
Qoñyr: The archive of Silence
Curator: Syrlybek Bekbota
Exhibitors: Ardak Mukanova, Assel Kadyrkhanova, ADYR‑ASPAN (Gulmaral Tattibayeva, Natalia Ligay), Anar Aubakir, Smail Bayaliyev, Nurbol Nurakhmet, Mansur Smagambetov, Oralbek Kaboke
Venue: Museo Storico Navale, Castello 2148 (Riva S. Biasio)
In response to the overall theme of Biennale Arte 2026, “In Minor Keys,” the Kazakhstan pavilion proposes the concept of “Konyr” as a metaphorical framework. The word “qonyr” is key in Kazakh cosmology. Literally, it means “brown,” but metaphorically, it has a much broader meaning: a special sonic register, the scent of the earth, the density of silence, a state of profound silence where meaning is born not through declaration, but through sensation and inner listening. Spread across six interconnected halls of the Museo Storico Navale, the Kazakhstan pavilion offers visitors an immersive sensory journey. The distant sound of horses’ hooves, spreading through the space thanks to the sound installation ADYR-ASPAN, attunes viewers to the quiet vibrations of the steppe. The exhibition then unfolds through a series of separate but interconnected spaces.
PAKISTAN
Punj•AB – A Sublime Terrain
Curator: Beatriz Cifuentes Feliciano
Exhibitor: Faiza Butt
Venue: Ex Farmacia Solveni, Dorsoduro 993-994
Conceived specifically for the pavilion, the project marks both a continuation of Butt’s longstanding engagement with identity, memory, and representation, and a significant departure into new material and collaborative, spatial practices. Visitors will enter a space dominated by monumental textile works . Suspended like paintings, these tapestries transform traditional floor-based weaving practices into immersive visual fields. Combining dhurrie weaving, ikat, jacquard, and hand-spun cotton, the works are unified through symbolic colour, architectural motifs, and intricate compositions that map the rise and fall of civilisations.
SIERRA LEONE (REPUBLIC OF)
Mondi Presenti / Worlds of Today
Curators: Sandro Orlandi Stagl, Willy Montini
Exhibitor: Hawa-Jane Bangura, Ayesha Feisal, Hickmatu Bintu Leigh, Abu Bakarr Mansaray, Eros Bonamini, Piergiorgio Colombara, Jacopo Di Cera, Fernando Garbellotto, Gianfranco Gentile, Margherita Levo Rosenberg, Alberto Salvetti, Seini Awa Camara, Abdoul Ganiou Dermani, Eloy Lokossou, Móyòsóré Martins, Armando Amaya Romero
Venue: Liceo Guggenheim, Sestiere Dorsoduro 2613
The National Pavilion of Sierra Leone, marking its historic first participation in the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, presents “Worlds of Today” . The title refers not only to the present moment, but also to a process of becoming. Drawing inspiration from the philosophical concept of “minority” as a revolutionary space (in
the Deleuzian sense, where language vibrates and generates new realities), the pavilion takes shape as a device for listening and research. Within the pavilion, the exhibition unfolds as an intimate and intense conversation. The curatorial approach avoids accumulation in favor of depth, staging a dialogue between four Sierra Leonean artists, four artists selected from ECOWAS countries, and several international artists.
There are also 31 Collateral Events which are part of the official program of the Biennale Arte 2026; discover our selection: Collateral Events to see – Biennale Arte 2026 | the PhotoPhore
