Alongside the Venice Art Biennale 2026, the city of Venice will host a rich program of exhibitions and events, outside the official program of Biennale’s National Pavilions and Collateral Events. A sort of “fuori-Biennale” with several great shows. Here below, the PhotoPhore’s Master Guide to the parallel exhibitions in Venice, divided for each sestiere (district), during the same period of Biennale Arte 2026.
The list is constantly updated; if you want to submit your show, write to info@thephotophore.com
CASTELLO DISTRICT
Amoako Boafo
Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Castello 4858
6 May – 22 November 2026
Drawing inspiration from the Renaissance atmosphere of Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Amoako Boafo’s first solo exhibition in Italy features a series of new works that directly reference the unique architecture and historical context of the site. These compelling new pieces, which continue Boafo’s exploration of identity and style, are installed on the second floor of the palazzo, establishing a dialogue between contemporary Black representation and the enduring legacy of Venetian artistic masterworks. Presented in collaboration with Gagosian.
More: cultura.gov.it
CANICULA
Complesso dell’Ospedaletto, Barbaria de le Tole 6691
6 May – 22 November 2026
Curated by Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi – the Fondazione’s artistic director and curator, respectively – Canicula is the third and final chapter of the “Trilogy of Uncertainties,” a series of exhibitions initiated by Fondazione In Between Art Film that has seen the Complesso dell’Ospedaletto transformed each time into a form of cinematic architecture. Beginning in 2022 with Penumbra and continuing in 2024 with Nebula, for each show in the trilogy a different atmospheric phenomenon has been deployed in order to explore states of vision as metaphors for the human condition. Canicula will premiere eight new site-specific video installations commissioned from Lawrence Abu Hamdan (1985, Jordan), Massimo D’Anolfi and Martina Parenti (1974, Italy/1972, Italy), Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk (1992, Ukraine/1993, Ukraine), Janis Rafa (1984, Greece), P. Staff (1987, United Kingdom), Wang Tuo (1984, China), Yuyan Wang (1989, China), and Maya Watanabe (1983, Peru).
More: inbetweenartfilm.com/en/canicula/
Elegy
Sant’Antonin Church, Salizada Sant’Antonin 3477
5 May – 31 July 2026
Elegy by Gabrielle Goliath, originally selected for the South African Pavilion, will be presented in Venice as an independent exhibition at Chiesa di Sant’Antonin. Conceived as a space of gathering, resonance, and collective care, Elegy unfolds as a work of mourning and repair, bringing together voices, absences, and acts of remembrance. In doing so, it affirms the possibility of coming together through grief, listening, and shared commitment. Following the cancellation of the South African Pavilion, friendships and solidarities are carrying the work forward. This independent presentation of Elegy has been made possible through the support of Bertha Foundation, Ibraaz, Fondazione ICA Milano, Raffaella Cortese, and the Friends of Elegy — a broad network of allied individuals and organisations. Following its presentation in Venice, Elegy will travel to Ibraaz in London in October 2026, and then on to Fondazione ICA Milano in January 2027.
Sessizlik / Silence
Palazzo Gradenigo, Campo Santa Giustina
6 May – 1 November 2026
The Güneştekin Foundation opens Palazzo Gradenigo in Venice to host Sessizlik / Silence, a site-specific exhibition by Ahmet Güneştekin curated by Sergio Risaliti. The installation spans multiple floors and combines monumental bronze sculptures with oil paintings that draw on Mediterranean and Anatolian iconography. The artist stages a conversation between collective memory and personal experience: bronze figures — many inspired by the workers who restored the building — coexist with painted works that incorporate restored Anatolian doors and folkloric symbols. The result is a pathway that asks visitors for quiet contemplation.
The Dreamer. In dreams begin responsibilities
Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Campo Santa Maria Formosa 5252
5 May 2026 – 30 April 2027
The Querini Stampalia Foundation is among the oldest Italian cultural institutions. Since 1869, it has promoted “the cult of good studies and useful disciplines”, with a curious gaze and a passion for the future. Giovanni Querini Stampalia was a dreamer: heir to a family ignited by art’s fire, science’s spark, vast libraries, fencing’s steel poetry, thundering horses. Unmarried, he gave it all—palace, collections, a midnight-open library for “useful studies,” free to everyone. A radical hack against locked-up knowledge.
The Dreamer exhibition—which opens on May 5—is conceived as a series of cinematic sets or stages: entry ignites family obsessions; the library pulses with late-night wisdom; stables clash hoof and blade; the finale unpacks the 1869 will’s eternal gift. What will you donate to tomorrow? What world do we want? No vision without dreams, no dreams without commitment, no commitment without the tear for beauty greater than us. No dreams without responsible dreamers.
More: www.querinistampalia.org
THE INVISIBLE CHORD. HANS HARTUNG AND MUSIC
Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Santa Maria Formosa 5252
4 May – 13 September 2026
A gifted dancer and pianist in his youth, Hans Hartung was obsessively devoted to music. Bringing together nearly eighty paintings, documents, and working tools, the exhibition explores the central role of sound in the artist’s plastic and existential universe. From Bach to Pink Floyd, including composers such as Lili Boulanger, a landscape of energies, gestures, and resonances runs throughout his entire body of work. The exhibition is curated by Thomas Schlesser and presented by Querini Stampalia Foundation and Hartung-Bergman Foundation in collaboration with Perrotin.
More: www.perrotin.com
SAN MARCO DISTRICT
ALIGHIERO BOETTI
SMAC VENICE, Piazza San Marco 105
7 May – 22 November 2026
SMAC Venice presents a major exhibition dedicated to Italian post-war master Alighiero Boetti (Turin, 1940 – Rome, 1994), curated by Elena Geuna and supported by Ben Brown Fine Arts. Bringing together approximately one hundred works across eight galleries, the exhibition offers an expansive survey of one of the most influential artists of the post-war period. Spanning more than twenty-five years, from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, it traces the full arc of Boetti’s artistic trajectory and highlights the breadth and complexity of his practice.
More: smacvenice.org/whats-on/alighiero-boetti
DOKU The Illusion
Espaces Louis Vuitton
8 May – 4 October 2026
In parallel with the 61st International Art Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia, marking the 20th anniversary of the Espaces Louis Vuitton and the 10th anniversary of the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s Hors-les-murs programme, the Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia presents DOKU The Illusion, a solo presentation by Chinese-born artist Lu Yang curated by Claire Staebler.
For his exhibition at the Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia, Lu Yang has created an installation featuring original sculptures and a video work centred on his new film DOKU The Illusion, the fourth chapter in the DOKU series, an ambitious narrative project the artist began in 2019. DOKU is a virtual character based on the digitalisation of the artist’s own face. The series depicts the solitary adventures of this multifaceted avatar, through which Lu Yang transcends the limits of the physical body and explores new forms of freedom through digital reincarnation.
Erwin Wurm. Dreamers
Museo Fortuny, Fondamenta Narisi 3958
6 May – 22 November 2026
The Museo Fortuny presents the work of the Austrian sculptor Erwin Wurm, his first major monographic exhibition in Italy. Born in 1954 at Bruck an der Mur, in the course of his career, Wurm has radically expanded the concept of sculpture, questioning notions of time, mass and surface, abstraction and representation. For many decades he has been using clothes to deal with sculptural issues. On this journey, his path has frequently crossed that of Mariano and Henriette Fortuny.
More: fortuny.visitmuve.it
Georg Baselitz. Eroi d’Oro
Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore
6 May – 27 September 2026
The exhibition Georg Baselitz. Eroi d’Oro, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, director of the Institute of Art History of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, features the German artist’s most recent series of large-scale paintings. The golden planes that form the grounds of the works on view, offer no illusion of depth; they creates a flatness reminiscent of medieval icons or the gilded backgrounds of the works of Northern Renaissance painter Stefan Lochner. Georg Baselitz’s painted bodies, executed in sharp lines, lie bare across these grounds as if floating on their surfaces, rendered through an approach that inherits from line drawing. They include larger-thanlife self-portraits, as well as numerous depictions of the artist’s wife, Elke, his lifelong companion and recurring model.
More: www.cini.it/en/eventi/georg-baselitz/
Natasha Tontey: The Phantom Combatants
Ateneo Veneto, Campo S. Fantin 1897
6 May – 25 October 2026
LAS Art Foundation (Berlin) and Amos Rex (Helsinki) present a new commission by Natasha Tontey at Ateneo Veneto on the occasion of Biennale di Venezia – 61st International Art Exhibition. Tontey’s multimedia installation relays the story of a 1950s female resistance fighter in Indonesia. Exploring physical and chemical transformation, Minahasan symbolism and contemporary military imaging, the work addresses the sovereignty of bodies, cultures and land. At the centre of the installation, Tontey’s video reimagines the story of Len Karamoy, a combatant in Permesta, a political movement in North Sulawesi fighting the centralised rule of the Indonesian government from 1957 to 1961 with support from the CIA. In Tontey’s retelling, Karamoy is not a single historical figure but a mythic presence, multiplied into the ‘Phantom Combatants’ through a chorus of young troops.
More: www.las-art.foundation
Possible Landscapes
Palazzo Corner della Ca’ Granda, San Marco 3978 | Aman Venice, Calle Tiepolo 1364
6 May – 30 September 2026
Charlotte Colbert brings her latest installation, Possible Landscapes, to the Venice Biennale Arte 2026. This promises to be a visionary journey through dream and imagination presenting surrealist sculptures that blur the boundaries between reality, fiction, and symbolism. Curated by Yasmine Helou, the exhibition unfolds along the Grand Canal, beginning with a monumental sculpture installed in the garden of Palazzo Corner della Ca’ Granda. This initial work conceptually extends to four additional installations situated in the manicured gardens of Aman Venice at Palazzo Papadopoli, together forming an expanded, almost mystical garden dispersed along the canal.
RAGE BAIT
Palazzo Franchetti, Fondamenta Narisi 2847 | 5 May – 30 June 2026
Le Cabanon, Giudecca Island | 5 May – 31 May 2026
Autotelic Foundation is pleased to present RAGE BAIT, an exhibition by Eva & Franco Mattes. This exhibition continues the artists’ recent investigation into the gap between online culture’s polished surface and its murky ethical depths: it explores how rage bait is the logical endpoint of platforms optimised for engagement. Curated by Nadim Samman and Luisa Haustein, RAGE BAIT spans installation, video and generative AI.
Spiral Economy. Charrière and Canova
Museo Correr, Piazza San Marco 52
30 April – 22 November 2026
The exhibition Spiral Economy unfolds as a dialogue between the Franco-Swiss artist Julian Charrière (*Morges, 1987, living and working in Berlin) and Antonio Canova, through the spaces of Museo Correr, revealing the poetry of materiality. Charrière meets Canova’s idealized forms: marble as body and phantom, a vessel of beauty and a witness to profound time. The material itself takes center stage: every fissure, vein, and geological texture carries within it the memory of ancient seas and metamorphic pressures. Where Canova’s marble leans toward the semblance of human flesh, Charrière evokes another truth: stone as a living body in its own right, needing no human likeness to exist. Spiral Economy invites visitors to reflect on every attempt to measure or master time and to ultimately be absorbed into deeper, planetary durations, where matter itself becomes the supreme guardian of time.
More: correr.visitmuve.it/en/exhibition/spiral-economy/
The Shape of Time
Abbazia di San Giorgio Maggiore, Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore
9 May – 22 November 2026
The Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice will present The Shape of Time, a major survey of the sculptural practice of the American artist Barry X Ball that celebrates the meeting between technological advances and Renaissance tradition set within the architectural masterpiece of Andrea Palladio. The artist’s works will be in dialogue with the sacred space of the Palladian Basilica, reinterpreting the past through a bold and experimental formal approach. The Shape of Time will bring together 23 sculptures in the basilica, with most of these works being shown to the public for the first time.
DORSODURO DISTRICT
Darkness Visible: The Long Shadow of Dictatorship
Spazio Punch, Fondamenta S. Biagio 800, Giudecca
06 May – 22 November 2026
As part of its 70 Anniversary celebrations, the Museo Moderno (Buenos Aires), in partnership with Spazio Punch, will present the collective exhibition “Oscuridad visible: la larga sombra de la Dictadura” [Darkness Visible: The Long Shadow of Dictatorship]. The exhibition will commemorate the painful chapter in Argentina’s history following the coup d’état that ushered in the country’s last military dictatorship fifty years ago. The project will include works by major contemporary Argentinian artists who responded to this historic moment with alarm, condemnation, or criticism; artists who embodied the transition from dictatorship to democracy; and artists who continue to denounce the violence that prevails in contemporary societies, particularly physical and psychological violence against women, including femicide in the region.
More: museomoderno.org
DIGITAL SAFARI: FABLES OF THE JUNGLE
Auditorium S. Margherita – Emanuele Severino, Dorsoduro 3689
5 May 2026
On 5 May 2026, on the eve of the Venice Biennale preview, AES+F’s Digital Safari: Fables of the Jungle will be presented in a one-day screening at Auditorium Santa Margherita – Emanuele Severino, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Organized by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, CSAR – Center for the Study of Russian Art, and LEI, the event will run from 11 am to 6 pm, with an additional evening session from 8 pm to 11 pm.
More: aesf.art
LYDIA OURAHMANE “5 Works”
Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, Dorsoduro 2829
5 May – 22 November 2026
Lydia Ourahmane will present a solo exhibition of new work at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation in Venice, curated by Polly Staple. Born in Saïda, Algeria in 1992, Lydia Ourahmane is a conceptual artist currently based in Barcelona. Her installations, sculptures, moving image and sound works create situations that have consequences beyond the walls of the institution, while negotiating the terms within. Exploring landscapes of displacement and community, her work revises how the movement of objects and people are influenced by factors such as state restrictions and invisible barriers.
More: nf.foundation/exhibitions/lydia-ourahmane
Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy
Gallerie dell’Accademia,
6 May – 19 October 2026
Internationally acclaimed artist Marina Abramović will make history in 2026 as the first living woman artist to be honored with a major exhibition at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. The exhibition marks the artist’s 80th birthday and establishes a profound dialogue between her pioneering performance art and the Renaissance masterpieces that have shaped the cultural identity of Venice. Curated by Shai Baitel, Artistic Director of the Modern Art Museum (MAM) Shanghai, in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition unfolds across both the museum’s permanent collection galleries and its temporary exhibition spaces — a first in the institution’s history — embedding Abramović’s practice within the very heart of Venetian patrimony. At its core, Transforming Energy is an encounter between past and present, material and immaterial, body and spirit.
More: www.gallerieaccademia.it
Painting in the Present Tense
Palazzo Cini. The Galery, Campo San Vio 864
6 May – 27 September 2026
For his exhibition at the Palazzo Cini Gallery, David Salle refocuses a custom-designed AI model on an earlier part of his oeuvre, the Tapestry Paintings (1990–91). In doing so, he highlights painting’s ability to collapse multiple temporal realities onto a single plane: ‘Everything in painting exists in the present tense,’ as he says. The original Tapestry Paintings were based on 18th-century Russian tapestries, which were themselves modelled after 16th- and 17th-century Italian paintings. This layering of art history now comes into contact with Salle’s proprietary AI model.
More: www.cini.it/en/eventi/painting-in-the-present-tense/
Pedro Cabrita Reis: XIV Steps
Magazzino del Sale 3 – Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, Dorsoduro 264
4 May – 22 November 2026
Born in 1956 in Lisbon, where he lives and works, Pedro Cabrita Reis is widely regarded as one of the leading figures of contemporary art. In “XIV Steps” the Artist engages with the dramatic narrative structure of the Stations of the Cross, a theme whose resonance extends far beyond its theological origins. As famously observed by Barnett Newman, the Stations articulate a universal reflection on suffering, endurance, and the human condition, dimensions that find renewed expression in this cycle of paintings.
Waves
Casa Sanlorenzo, Dorsoduro 170
6 May – 28 June 2026
The centerpiece of Sanlorenzo’s 2026 program will be Waves, a group exhibition hosted at Casa Sanlorenzo from 6 May – 28 June 2026. Curated by Sergio Risaliti and Cristiano Seganfreddo, with the scientific support of Ersilia Vaudo Scarpetta, the exhibition explores movement and transformation as universal languages, building a dialogue between art and science through the metaphor of the wave. The comparison between twentieth-century masters — Alexander Calder, Fausto Melotti, Lucio Fontana — and the sculpture of Tony Cragg, alongside the research of Christine Safa, Friedrich Andreoni and Marcello Maloberti, constructs a layered narrative in which the wave is both a physical phenomenon and a cultural symbol, deeply rooted in the brand’s identity.
CANNAREGIO DISTRICT
Anish Kapoor: Palazzo Manfrin
Palazzo Manfrin
5 May – 9 August 2026
Anish Kapoor presents an ambitious new exhibition at Palazzo Manfrin, the 16th century Palazzo and Venetian landmark in Cannaregio which is home to the artist’s Foundation. This will be the second time the historic building has been open to the public. ‘Anish Kapoor: Palazzo Manfrin’ will bring together around 100 architectural models documenting projects both realised and unrealised from the past 50 years of Kapoor’s practice, alongside a series of large-scale installations and stainless-steel works. Anish Kapoor: Palazzo Manfrin presents Kapoor’s idiosyncratic approach to the space of the object and its potential to create new space in our encounter with it.
More: www.lissongallery.com
ARTOCALYPSA
Teatro Fondamenta Nuove, Cannaregio 5013
06 May – 06 November, 2026
Few contemporary artists provoke reactions as instinctively as David Černý. The exhibition Artocalypsa unfolds as an immersive environment exploring the trajectory of violence within human civilization. Černý approaches violence not as a singular event but as a continuum — what might be called “violence in transit.” From the fragile spark of human inspiration to the immense technological systems capable of destroying it, violence follows a disturbing path through history. The installation constructs a powerful sensory arc in which image, sound, and movement converge. Mechanical rhythms, groaning bodies, and the cold logic of industrial force create an environment that is both unsettling and hypnotic. Yet Černý deliberately withholds resolution. There is no redemption, no comforting narrative, no clear horizon beyond the machinery of violence.
More: www.artocalypsa.com
AURA
AMA Venezia, Fondamenta de Ca’ Vendramin 2395
5 May – 22 November 2026
AURA brings works and presences into relation, where art manifests as intensity, perception, and shared experience. The works, all drawn from the AMA Collection, unfold in a continuous dialogue between materiality and immateriality, between the visible and the invisible. At its center, the monumental painting by Jenny Saville, conceived as a single large unique canvas, extends her exploration of the human body to an immersive, almost architectural scale; alongside a new work by Ed Ruscha that resonates between Venice and Venezia, while Tino Sehgal leads the viewer into a work in darkness, composed of movement and presence. AURA invites visitors to pause and look, transforming vision into a physical, emotional, and mental experience.
More: ama.art/en/exhibitions
CARMEN. Utopias of Belonging
Oratorio dei Crociferi, Campo dei Gesuiti 4904
1 May – 31 May, 2026
The exhibition presents the new video and sound installation “Carmen” (2026) by Ieva Lygnugarytė and is curated by Meral Karacaoğlan. The work takes as its point of departure Carmen de statura, feritate ac venatione bisontis (1521/23), a Neo-Latin poem by Nicolaus Hussovianus written to accompany the gift of a straw-stuffed European bison from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to Pope Leo X. A gesture that failed with the pope’s sudden death and remained outside canonical histories. Rather than recounting this episode as a closed historical narrative, the 30-minute video imagines the poet’s gradual transformation into the animal he once hoped would secure him institutional recognition, collapsing Renaissance humanist ambition and contemporary cinematic language into a speculative meditation on desire, failure, and unresolved belonging.
More: carmenbisontis.com
Ethnography of the Body and Material – Slowness and Depth in an Accelerated Society
Palazzo Pisani Santa Marina, Cannaregio 6104
6 May – 22 November 2026
This exhibition, Ethnography of the Body and Material—Slowness and Depth in an Accelerated Society, aims to restore a different sense of time and physical perception inherent in the act of “making” back into today’s world of ever-accelerating information and consumption. Here, “ethnography” refers to an approach to interpret the practice of artists—a slow process of creation involving commitment to materials and manual labor—in cultural and social contexts.
More: venice.goforkogei.com
Strange Rules
Unfinished
Palazzo Diedo – Berggruen Arts & Culture, Cannaregio 2386
4 May – 22 November 2026
Berggruen Arts & Culture has announced the opening of two new exhibitions, ‘Strange Rules’ and ‘Unfinished,’ at Palazzo Diedo in Venice on May 4, 2026.
The exhibition ‘Strange Rules’ is dedicated to Protocol Art, examining its intersections with digital art, artificial intelligence, and algorithmic structures. Curatorial direction for this exhibition involves contributions from figures such as Mat Dryhurst, Holly Herndon, and Hans Ulrich Obrist. It delves into themes of human-machine co-creation and the application of evolutionary algorithms in artistic production.
‘Unfinished’ will center on the work of conceptual artist Ceal Floyer, known for her minimalist interventions and investigations into perception. The broader program at Palazzo Diedo will also feature works by a range of international artists including Carsten Höller, Urs Fischer, Piero Golia, Ibrahim Mahama, Mariko Mori, Sterling Ruby, Jim Shaw, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Aya Takano, Lee Ufan, and Liu Wei, presented across various mediums such as digital art, video, photography, sound installations, and readymades.
SAN POLO DISTRICT
ARCHIVIO
Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Campo dei Frari 3002
16 April – 31 July 2026
ARCHIVIO is Dayanita Singh’s tribute to both the Italian archives she has photographed over the past decade and to her own evolving archive of images made in Italy over the last 25 years. Opening on 16 April 2026 at the Archivio di Stato in Venice, the exhibition brings together two intertwined bodies of work: Singh’s long engagement with institutional archival repositories and her decades-long visual conversation with Italy’s architecture, interior spaces, artworks, friends, archivists, flowers and more. In ARCHIVIO, the act of photographing becomes a form of cataloguing – an ongoing attempt to understand how memory is shaped, structured, and preserved.
More: www.frithstreetgallery.com
PENELOPE. Her Journeys
Fondation Valmont – Palazzo Bonvicini, Calle de Ca’ Bonvicini 2161/A
5 May – 31 October 2026
Penelope was a visionary weaver who turned the only form of expression allowed to women into an act of resistance. Far from passively awaiting her husband, she used her loom to subvert the established order, asserting control over her own time and destiny. This exhibition, Penelope. Her Journeys, reclaims her story by placing the female voice at its centre. For artists Gayle Chong Kwan, Stephanie Blake and Kimiko Yoshida, Penelope is not a symbol of obedience, but a woman in search of freedom, creative space, and identity; an artist who transforms life into language.
More: fondationvalmont.com
The Quiet Source
Scuola Grande di San Rocco
9 May – 22 November 2026
Presented during the 61st Venice Art Biennale, the Scuola Grande di San Rocco presents “The Quiet Source”, an exhibition by Jan Fabre that brings three new silicon bronze sculptures into dialogue with Tintoretto’s celebrated pictorial cycle. Jan Fabre’s “The Quiet Source” stages a dialogue between past and present through three sculptures created by the Flemish artist. Installed along the central axis of the building, the works interact conceptually and spatially with Tintoretto’s paintings, generating a layered encounter between two artistic languages separated by centuries, yet united by a shared exploration of light, spirituality and human experience.
SANTA CROCE DISTRICT
Helter Skelter: Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince
Fondazione Prada, Santa Croce 2215
9 May – 23 November 2026
“Helter Skelter: Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince” is an exhibition curated by Nancy Spector at Ca’ Corner della Regina in Venice, which reveals a creative conversation between the work of two prominent American artists, Arthur Jafa (b. 1960) and Richard Prince (b. 1949), that has never been examined before. Born a decade apart, they share an ethos of lawlessness when it comes to the appropriation and manipulation of images siphoned from movies, pulp novels, comic books, YouTube videos, sci-fi stories, album covers, record sleeves, rock ‘n’ roll posters, first-edition Beat volumes, news reels, celebrity memorabilia, and social-media posts. Trafficking heavily in American popular culture, they expose its grit and grift, while embracing many of its myths and perversions.
More: www.fondazioneprada.org
Hernan Bas: The Visitors
Ca’ Pesaro, Santa Croce 2076
7 May 2026 – 30 August 2026
With over 30 new artworks in an immersive installation conceived specifically for the Museum, Hernan Bas (Miami, 1978) will present The Visitors at Ca’ Pesaro. Drawing inspiration from Venice, a city uniquely attuned to tourism and continually shaped by its consequences – and also the site of a recent residency undertaken by the artist – Bas has created a new body of work featuring tourists in scenarios both imagined and real. These protagonists – predominantly white, western and male – inhabit a shifting terrain of bucket-list attractions, historic sites, sacred spaces, seedy entertainment venues and sanitised examples of the natural world. With the fundamental disconnection between these ‘visitors’ and the worlds they traverse, Bas exposes the absurdity of iconic clichés of tourism such as the Mona Lisa or the Trevi Fountain; dark tourism destinations such as Chernobyl, Alcatraz and the Aokigahara Forest; and tourist traps designed to con, swindle or disappoint.
More: capesaro.visitmuve.it
