Pavilion of Greece. Escape Room. 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys, 2026. Image © Andrea Avezzù, Courtesy of la Biennale di Venezia
Share
Share
Or
https://www.archdaily.com/1041443/8-national-pavilion-highlights-from-the-2026-venice-art-biennale
In December 2024, art curator Koyo Kouoh became the first African woman selected to curate the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. She proposed an introspective and sensitive approach to the exhibition, shaped by themes of grief, memory, spirituality, and global exhaustion. Following her premature passing in May 2025, the Biennale decided to continue with the same curatorial project, titled In Minor Keys. Wolff Architects was appointed by Kouoh in early 2025 to realize the exhibition design and scenography, focused on “the transformative spatial power of the threshold as a portal to alternative comprehension and experiences.” The event was inaugurated on Saturday, May 9, and will run until Sunday, November 22, 2026, across the Giardini della Biennale, the Arsenale di Venezia, and other locations throughout Venice.
In the recently renovated Central Pavilion at the Giardini and throughout the Arsenale, thresholds are marked by indigo banners that extend from the rafters to the floor, signaling transitions between the exhibition’s different phases. The exhibition includes 31 Collateral Events and 100 National Participations distributed across the historic pavilions at the Giardini (29), the Arsenale (25), and locations throughout Venice’s historic center (46). Participating countries include the Republic of Guinea, the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, the Republic of Nauru, Qatar, the Republic of Sierra Leone, the Federal Republic of Somalia, and the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam. El Salvador is also participating for the first time with its own pavilion. The event has also been the subject of protests and controversy following the acceptance of Russia and Israel as participants, a decision that faced opposition from the outset.
Below is a selection of eight national pavilions that, through their themes, techniques, objects, and installations, invite reflection on the built environment and contemporary living. The exhibitions representing India, Saudi Arabia, Greece, Lebanon, Canada, Germany, Singapore, and Vatican City bring together artworks that forefront craftsmanship, explore unconventional materials, and test the boundaries of new technologies. Through these techniques, the installations translate into material form critiques of spatial translations of authoritarianism, the deliberate destruction of historical structures, and the intensity of contemporary urban life, while also pointing to the fundamental human need to inhabit spaces of contemplation and rest.
Related Article The Venice Biennale Over Time: Classic Projects and Stories from Architecture’s Most Iconic Exhibition India
Geographies of Distance: Remembering Home 
Pavilion of India. Geographies of Distance: Remembering Home. 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys, 2026. Image © Jacopo Salvi, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
The National Pavilion of India, located in the Arsenale and curated by Rwandan-born curator of Indian origin Amin Jaffer, reflects on the idea and concept of home. The curatorial statement describes home not only as a present, fixed, or material location, but also as a reconstruction shaped by memory and emotion; a “portable condition” composed of material, ritual, and personal mythology, constantly remade through human experience. Through works by Alwar Balasubramaniam, Sumakshi Singh, Ranjani Shettar, Asim Waqif, and Skarma Sonam Tashi, the exhibition engages with traditional elements that persist within the country’s rapidly shifting present. The artists employ natural and recycled materials, including clay, bamboo, thread, lacquer, cardboard, papier-mâché, and soil, through processes and handmade structures that evoke regional knowledge systems and traditional crafts. The display responds to India’s accelerated urban expansion, arguing that the ongoing pursuit of development is threatening traditional architecture and craft practices.
Saudi Arabia
May your tears never dry, you who weep over stones 
Pavilion of Saudi Arabia. May your tears never dry, you who weep over stones. 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys, 2026. Image © Marco Zorzanello, Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
Saudi Arabia has installed in the Biennale’s Arsenale a spatial intervention by Palestinian-Saudi visual artist Dana Awartani, curated by Art Jameel director Antonia Carver. Trained in classical Islamic geometric principles and traditional craft techniques, Awartani created an immersive environment inspired by an archaeological site, where visitors walk across a mosaic floor composed of patterns and motifs drawn from heritage sites across the Arab world, currently threatened by war and destruction. The installation consists of thousands of handmade tiles produced with natural muds and clays in collaboration with Saudi-based master craftspeople. Drawing from vernacular adobe construction techniques used across West Asia, the process intentionally avoids binding agents, allowing the tiles to crack as they dry and emphasizing the fragility of both the material and the cultural histories it references. The work incorporates motifs inspired by mosaics from mosques, churches, synagogues, and civic spaces in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, reflecting on the preservation of shared cultural heritage and the collective responsibility of safeguarding historical memory.
Pavilion of Greece. Escape Room. 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys, 2026. Image © Jacopo Salvi, courtesy of La Biennale di VeneziaThe Greece Pavilion in the Biennale’s Giardini is a neo-Byzantine building constructed between 1933 and 1934. For this edition, the building was transformed into an immersive installation designed by visual artist Andreas Angelidakis and curated by George Bekirakis. The artist describes the project as “a post-digital Platonic Cave, a virtual room for humans to physically occupy.” The installation draws on contemporary discussions surrounding post-truth politics and right-wing populism, translating ideas of nationalism, history, and national identity into a digital aesthetic that presents them as fabricated and commercialized constructs. The result is a provocative installation that conceals the appearance and structure of the original building with replicas, projections, staged realities, and algorithmic illusions. The aesthetic of the intervention has been described as S&M and post-punk, confronting the building’s fascist references.
Lebanon
Don’t Get Me Wrong
Pavilion of Lebanon. Don’t Get Me Wrong. 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys, 2026. Image © Jacopo Salvi, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
The scenography for the Lebanon Pavilion was designed by EAST Architecture Studio. The project establishes the spatial conditions for an immersive installation by artist and painter Nabil Nahas, curated by heritage curator Nada Ghandour. The exhibited work consists of 26 acrylic-on-canvas panels extending across 45 linear meters, inviting viewers to “question the relationship between humans, nature, and the cosmos” through a visual experience. The scenography was conceived as a support structure for viewing, elevating, and detaching the paintings to calibrate distance, orientation, and the act of looking. The paintings are positioned beyond the viewer’s habitual field of vision, with their lower edges raised more than two meters above the ground and their surfaces detached from the walls, producing two effects: viewers become aware of displacement, position, effort, and distance, while the wall itself acquires spatial depth. Illumination accompanies the installation, creating an environment intended for contemplation.
Canada
Abbas Akhavan: Entre chien et loup 
Pavilion of Canada. Abbas Akhavan: Entre chien et loup. 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys, 2026. Image © Andrea Avezzù, Courtesy of la Biennale di Venezia
The Canadian Pavilion, a modern building constructed between 1956 and 1957 at the Biennale’s Giardini, hosts an immersive project by visual artist Abbas Akhavan curated by Canadian filmmaker and screenwriter Kim Nguyen. For the installation, Akhavan reimagines the pavilion as a Wardian case, an early form of terrarium historically used to transport plants across the British Empire. At the center of the intervention is a custom pool equipped with grow lights displaying giant water lilies of the genus Victoria, plants prominently exhibited at London’s 1851 Great Exhibition inside the Crystal Palace. Native to South America and named after Queen Victoria, the lilies became symbols of imperial technological and scientific ambition during the Victorian era. By recontextualizing them within the pavilion of a Commonwealth country established during Victoria’s reign, the project reflects on the relationship between colonial history, exhibition culture, and the circulation of natural specimens. Akhavan also draws parallels between nineteenth-century world fairs and contemporary international biennials, examining how architecture and display continue to shape perceptions of nature, power, and cultural identity.
Pavilion of Germany. Ruin. 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys, 2026. Image © Andrea Avezzù, Courtesy of la Biennale di VeneziaThe Pavilion of Germany at the Giardini, a neoclassical building from 1909, is hosting an exhibition curated by museum director Kathleen Reinhardt, which brings together works by conceptual artist Sung Tieu and the late installation artist Henrike Naumann. The exhibition examines how gaps and absences within East German history continue to shape contemporary political and social realities. Drawing from references such as the vanished GDR pavilion, the demolished Palace of the Republic, and the Sunflower House in Rostock, the pavilion proposes these “phantom spaces” as curatorial frameworks for reflecting on fractured historical memory. Sung Tieu wrapped the pavilion’s neoclassical façade in a trompe-l’oeil mosaic referencing a socialist-era prefabricated housing block on Gehrenseestraße in Berlin, where the artist lived during childhood and which housed Vietnamese contract workers in East Germany before later accommodating migrant communities after reunification. Henrike Naumann’s installation approaches similar questions through interior design, combining references to postwar Germany, the GDR pavilion, and the rise of far-right violence.
Holy See
The Ear is the Eye of the Soul 
Pavilion of The Holy See. The Ear is the Eye of the Soul. 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys, 2026. Image © Luca Zambelli Bais, Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
The exhibition representing the Vatican City was curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, and the former CTO at the Serpentine Galleries in London, Ben Vickers. It features works by 24 artists, including Patti Smith, Brian Eno, Jim Jarmusch, and Raúl Zurita, brought together under a concept inspired by the life and work of Hildegard of Bingen, who understood sound as a form of knowledge and a bridge between the body and the world. Focused on deep listening and contemplation, the works are presented across two venues, Complesso di Santa Maria Ausiliatrice and Giardino Mistico dei Carmelitani Scalzi, both accessible by reservation. In the Giardino Mistico, new commissions by composers, musicians, poets, and artists form a collective sonic composition developed in collaboration with Soundwalk Collective. The garden itself contributes to the installation through an instrument that translates plant bioelectric activity into sound. At Santa Maria Ausiliatrice, the pavilion is conceived as a living archive that invites silence, care, and communal listening.
Pavilion of Singapore. A Pause. 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys, 2026. Image © Jacopo Salvi, courtesy of La Biennale di VeneziaContemporary artist Amanda Heng Liang Ngim created Singapore’s contribution to the biennial as a site-specific installation advocating for the human need for rest. Curated by Selene Yap, the exhibition consists of an architectural intervention within the Arsenale, offering visitors an environment intended to recalibrate circulation and perception. The installation provides opportunities for sitting, leaning, and quiet exchange, alongside photographs and video portraits by the artist that present the body as subject and medium while documenting everyday moments of repose. The project examines how stillness is “negotiated” within the intensity of dense urban environments and proposes an invitation for bodies to reclaim their rhythms through moments of calm.