By Sara Bright
You step off the vaporetto at the Giardini and the immediate physical sensation. is a familiar, exhausting density.
This is the art world’s grand, chaotic mechanism grinding into gear. It’s an Olympic Games of culture, where nations desperately attempt to project geopolitical relevance through the medium of contemporary art. The irony, of course, is that the entire spectacle takes place in a city slowly, irreversibly sinking into the Adriatic.
This year, the Biennale’s central exhibition bears the title In Minor Keys. It is a surprisingly quiet, almost sombre proposition. The genesis of this theme carries its own heavy, unshakeable gravity. Koyo Kouoh, the appointed curator, died mere weeks before the official announcement. Her team, operating with the terrifying momentum of grief and obligation, has assembled the exhibition based entirely on her final notes.
Kouoh’s intention was to lower the volume. She wanted to strip away the grand, orchestral pomp that usually dominates the Arsenale and force the viewer to listen for smaller, deeper frequencies. “We have no choice but to tune in… to improvise,” she wrote, drawing heavily on the animism and poetry of the Caribbean and Africa. Her goal was fundamentally radical. She wanted to return art to its primitive function. Joy. Emotional attachment. She wanted to stop the art world from treating every canvas as a geopolitical statement and allow it to function simply as a human anchor.
The national pavilions, predictably, operate on a different frequency entirely. If the central exhibition is an exercise in quiet grief and sensory recalibration, the pavilions remain a bloodsport. This is where the structural inequities of the global art market are quite literally set in stone. One hundred nations have arrived in Venice this year. It’s a record number. A massive, unwieldy expansion.
Countries like Guinea, Somalia, Nauru, and El Salvador are presenting for the very first time. They have fought tooth and nail to secure funding, rent obscure palazzos, and claim a fragment of the international spotlight. Yet, the brutal historical hierarchy remains. The oldest participants – Britain, France, Belgium – still occupy the prime real estate. They sit in their permanent, custom-built pavilions in the Giardini like aristocratic landlords surveying a sprawling, messy tenant farm.
Take the British Pavilion. Lubaina Himid is presenting a series of massive, theatrical paintings under the title Predicting History: Testing Translation.
The premise is displacement. Himid uses bright, surrealist compositions to explore the absolute impossibility of feeling at home in a fractured world. She builds scenes that feel unsteady, layered with soundscapes created by Magda Stawarska. The result is a heavy, persistent tension. It feels like watching a play where the actors have forgotten their lines and the stage is slowly tilting.
Next door, the French have handed their freshly renovated pavilion to Yto Barrada. Her installation, Comme Saturne, leans heavily into the cosmology of Saturn – a planetary symbol of melancholy and deceleration. Barrada is working with dévoré, a brutal textile technique where acid literally eats away the fabric. It’s a violent, chemical process. “Like Saturn, the revolution devours its children,” the press text reminds us. The visual effect is undeniable. The fabric looks scarred, bearing the physical evidence of its own destruction.
But aesthetic theory feels somewhat weightless when you step outside and confront the political reality of the pavilions in 2026.
The Israeli pavilion is currently ringed by tension and the threat of physical boycott. Almost two hundred cultural figures signed a demand for Israel’s exclusion. The Biennale organisers refused. They retreated to the familiar defence of “open dialogue.” Israel is represented by Belu-Simion Fainaru, an artist who publicly opposes cultural boycotts. The atmosphere around the pavilion is toxic.
There is a new, chilling clause in the contract forcing the artist to remain present at the opening regardless of provocation. It is less an exhibition than a defensive trench.
Australia’s presence is equally scarred by controversy. The Australian government initially cancelled their own selected artists – Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino – following pressure from right-wing politicians regarding Sabsabi’s Lebanese heritage and his exploration of Islamophobia. The domestic art scene rebelled. The ensuing outrage forced a humiliating government U-turn.
Sabsabi and Dagostino are here, but the air is thick with the knowledge of how easily they were discarded.
And then there is the Russian pavilion. Still closed. Still empty.
It has been shuttered since 2022. Its continued closure is a silent, massive void in the middle of the Giardini. The European Commission is currently threatening to pull two million euros in funding from the 2028 Biennale if the sanctions against Russia are not strictly upheld. Finland has cancelled its cultural delegation simply because of the rumoured possibility of Russian participation. The Biennale Foundation continues to issue defiant statements about rejecting censorship, but the empty building tells the real story. It’s a monument to a fractured world.
To find genuine, unburdened innovation this year, you have to look past the heavyweights and examine the newcomers.
Nauru, the smallest island nation on earth, has rented a space to present AIM Inundated, Imagining Life After Land. The country has been physically gutted by decades of colonial phosphate mining. Its economy is ruined. Its landmass is sinking. Yet, curator Khaled Ramadan actively rejects catastrophic rhetoric. He is not presenting a tragedy. He is presenting a survival manual. Nauru is offered as a model for a future where radical adaptation is the only option. To stage an exhibition about the inevitability of sinking land in Venice, a city
famously drowning under its own history, is a brilliant, terrifying piece of curation.
Qatar has also arrived, temporarily occupying a plot in the Giardini where their permanent pavilion will eventually stand. They have erected a tent. Rirkrit Tiravanija has orchestrated an environment focused entirely on communal exchange. Sophia Al-Maria projects dreamlike films. Tarek Atoui improvises sound. Fadi Kattan cooks. It’s a space designed for human friction and shared experience. It’s a very confident, very expensive flex of soft power.
But perhaps the strangest, most compelling space in Venice this year belongs to an entity that sits entirely outside the national competition.
The Vatican. The Holy See has titled its pavilion The Ear is the Eye of the Soul. Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ben Vickers, the space is dedicated to the medieval mystic Hildegard of Bingen. It’s an attempt to construct a “sonic prayer.” They have assembled an absurdly high-profile roster: Patti Smith, Brian Eno, FKA Twigs, Dev Hynes. It’s a collision of ancient theology and absolute contemporary cool. The space demands total silence. It demands that you stop moving, stop networking, and simply listen.
In a city currently swamped by a hundred nations aggressively shouting for attention, the Vatican has decided to weaponise quietness.
Leaving the Giardini, walking back toward the Arsenale as the evening light hits the water, the sheer scale of the Biennale feels slightly crushing. The political posturing, the endless parties, the desperate desire for relevance – it all feels slightly out of step with Kouoh’s original, minor-key intention. We are building a hundred pavilions in a city that is slowly disappearing. We are arguing over exhibition space while the tide rises.
