Venice shifts into Biennale mode. The 61st International Art Exhibition opens May 9 and runs through November 22, 2026, with curator Koyo Kouoh setting the tone under the theme In Minor Keys, turning away from grand gestures toward the quiet undercurrents that shape daily life. The key is minor, but the resonance is major. Animal-human hybrids stalk a digital jungle, blinding light floods Renaissance hospitals, and screens are asked whether they can reshape biology itself. Surveillance, reproduction, mourning, resistance — all refracted through the moving image, the immersive environment, and the charged presence of bodies in space.
CIFRA's experts in media art and digital culture have done the filtering for you. What follows is our curated selection: the video installations, immersive environments, screen-based projects, and technologically charged exhibitions that matter most this Biennale.
Whether you're heading to Venice this May or bookmarking for later — save this guide.
GET THE MAP CIFRA's experts in media art and digital culture have done the filtering for you. What follows is our curated selection: the video installations, immersive environments, screen-based projects, and technologically charged exhibitions that matter most this Biennale.
Whether you're heading to Venice this May or bookmarking for later — save this guide.
NATIONAL PAVILIONS
HENRIKE NAUMANN & SUNG TIEU — RUIN
📍 GERMAN PAVILION, GIARDINI
May 9 – November 22
Curated by Kathleen Reinhardt, the German Pavilion brings together Henrike Naumann and Sung Tieu — two artists whose large-scale installations interrogate political systems and invisible architectures of control. Naumann passed away on February 14, 2026 — her contributions will be realized as a Gemeinschaftswerk, a collaborative effort guided by her artistic vision, turning the pavilion into both exhibition and memorial.
Why it matters: Historical responsibility made spatial — where political systems are felt through objects, and an artist's vision persists beyond her life.
Why it matters: Historical responsibility made spatial — where political systems are felt through objects, and an artist's vision persists beyond her life.
MAJA MALOU LYSE — THINGS TO COME
📍 DANISH PAVILION, GIARDINI
May 9 – November 22
A speculative video fairytale set inside a futuristic sperm bank. Maja Malou Lyse draws on research suggesting erotic imagery can increase sperm motility — and pushes the premise further: could images influence human reproduction itself? Fusing science, speculative fiction, and pornography, the Danish Pavilion examines how digital culture shapes not only imagination but biological reality.
Why it matters: Screens don't just show bodies — they may be reshaping them. A speculative video work where image culture meets fertility science, and the digital becomes biological.
Why it matters: Screens don't just show bodies — they may be reshaping them. A speculative video work where image culture meets fertility science, and the digital becomes biological.
Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026 (work in progress).
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
JENNA SUTELA — AEOLIAN SUITE
📍 AALTO PAVILION (FINland), GIARDINI
May 9 – November 22
Marking the 70th anniversary of the Finnish Pavilion, Jenna Sutela presents an immersive installation inspired by wind as both physical force and cultural metaphor. Blending sound, music, and movement, the pavilion becomes an atmospheric environment where invisible forces become tangible. Wind as technology, climate, spirituality, and communication — all at once.
Why it matters: Where natural phenomena meet experimental sound and the invisible is made present through artistic systems.
Why it matters: Where natural phenomena meet experimental sound and the invisible is made present through artistic systems.
Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026 (work in progress).
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
ÁSTA FANNEY SIGURÐARDÓTTIR — POCKET UNIVERSE
📍 ICELAND PAVILION
May 9 – November 22
A multidisciplinary exhibition that unfolds as a shifting landscape of encounters. At its center, a moving-image work follows Creature Zero on a quest to find the "original rock" — the first step in the creation of the earth. Filmed at sites associated with mystical traditions, the work explores how belief and imagination shape movement through uncertain times. Orbs, charms, and talismans recur throughout; live performances emerge unexpectedly during the Biennale.
Why it matters: Moving image as cosmogony — where the search for origin becomes a way of navigating the present, and the pavilion itself becomes an unstable, living world.
Why it matters: Moving image as cosmogony — where the search for origin becomes a way of navigating the present, and the pavilion itself becomes an unstable, living world.
EGLĖ BUDVYTYTĖ — ANIMISM SINGS ANARCHY
📍 LITHUANIA PAVILION
May 9 – November 22
Commissioned by the Lithuanian National Museum of Art, Eglė Budvytytė presents Warmblooded and Wingless, an ongoing multichannel film with sound and spatial components. Known for performances and video art that explore embodiment and symbiotic relationships with the environment, Budvytytė opens up a worldview rooted in lost belief systems and alternative ways of coexistence.
Why it matters: Video and performance as animist practice — where the body becomes porous, belief becomes method, and coexistence with the non-human is not a concept but a lived register.
Why it matters: Video and performance as animist practice — where the body becomes porous, belief becomes method, and coexistence with the non-human is not a concept but a lived register.
Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026 (work in progress).
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
THE EAR IS THE EYE OF THE SOUL
📍 HOLY SEE PAVILION (VATICAN) — COMPLESSO DI SANTA MARIA AUSILIATRICE, GIARDINO MISTICO DEI CARMELITANI SCALZI
May 9 – November 22
Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ben Vickers, the exhibition takes the form of a sonic prayer inspired by Saint Hildegard of Bingen — a 12th-century Benedictine abbess, poet, and composer. Across two Venetian sites, visitors move through new commissions on headphones — works by Brian Eno, FKA Twigs, Jim Jarmusch, Patti Smith, Dev Hynes, Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, and others. Also on view: the final work by Alexander Kluge, completed before his death in March.
Why it matters: A rare convergence of generations gathered around one question — what does it mean to truly listen. The canal city becomes a space for duration, reflection, and sound as spiritual attention.
Why it matters: A rare convergence of generations gathered around one question — what does it mean to truly listen. The canal city becomes a space for duration, reflection, and sound as spiritual attention.
TAREK ATOUI & RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA — UNTITLED (A GATHERING OF REMARKABLE PEOPLE)
📍 QATAR PAVILION, GIARDINI
May 9 – November 22
Rirkrit Tiravanija has designed a tent-like structure as a space for cultural exchange — hosting a film by Sophia Al-Maria, live performances organized by Tarek Atoui, a large-scale sculpture by Alia Farid, and a culinary program by Palestinian chef Fadi Kattan. The pavilion is less an exhibition than an ongoing event: a gathering that keeps happening.
Why it matters: Culture as the connective tissue between people — and a pavilion that insists on presence, exchange, and the table as a form of art.
Why it matters: Culture as the connective tissue between people — and a pavilion that insists on presence, exchange, and the table as a form of art.
GENTI KORINI — A PLACE IN THE SUN
📍 ALBANIAN PAVILION, ARSENALE
May 9 – November 22
A three-channel video fuses live acting, puppetry, animation, and an original score performed in Zaum — the transrational language invented by Russian Futurist poets as a pure language beyond grammar and syntax. Albania as a "somewhere place," perpetually defined by others' projections: romanticized frontier, orientalist fantasy, stage for civilizational hierarchies. Korini links the disquiet of the present to the unsettled dreams of a century ago, when borders, languages, and identities were in flux.
Why it matters: Identity as performance, language as decomposition — a pavilion that turns colonial projection into speculative theater.
Why it matters: Identity as performance, language as decomposition — a pavilion that turns colonial projection into speculative theater.
BOGNA BURSKA & DANIEL KOTOWSKI — LIQUID TONGUES
📍 POLISH PAVILION, GIARDINI
May 9 – November 22
A choir of hearing and Deaf performers interprets whale communication codes in spoken English and international sign language. Shot partly underwater — where Deaf people communicate freely while hearing people's voices distort — the installation works across image, sound, and acoustic waves. Inspired by Roger Payne's legendary Songs of the Humpback Whale (1970), which helped save whales from extinction.
Why it matters: Communication at its limits — where sign language, whale song, and water become a single score, and the boundary between hearing and Deaf dissolves into something shared.
Why it matters: Communication at its limits — where sign language, whale song, and water become a single score, and the boundary between hearing and Deaf dissolves into something shared.
JAKUB JANSA & SELMECI KOCKA JUSKO — THE SILENCE OF THE MOLE
📍 LITHUANIA PAVILION
May 9 – November 22
Commissioned by the Lithuanian National Museum of Art, Eglė Budvytytė presents Warmblooded and Wingless, an ongoing multichannel film with sound and spatial components. Known for performances and video art that explore embodiment and symbiotic relationships with the environment, Budvytytė opens up a worldview rooted in lost belief systems and alternative ways of coexistence.
Why it matters: Video and performance as animist practice — where the body becomes porous, belief becomes method, and coexistence with the non-human is not a concept but a lived register.
Why it matters: Video and performance as animist practice — where the body becomes porous, belief becomes method, and coexistence with the non-human is not a concept but a lived register.
Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026 (work in progress).
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
THE AURAL SEA
📍 UZBEKISTAN PAVILION
May 9 – November 22
Taking its title from the Aral Sea — a salt lake that has lost over 90% of its volume since the 1960s due to Soviet irrigation planning — the pavilion treats the disappeared body of water as a harbor of knowledge. Drawing on myths and folklore of the region, seven artists explore the environmental and cultural transformations the sea's collapse set in motion.
Why it matters: Ecological grief as collective memory — and a pavilion that listens to what a vanished sea still carries.
Why it matters: Ecological grief as collective memory — and a pavilion that listens to what a vanished sea still carries.
GEOGRAPHIES OF DISTANCE: REMEMBERING HOME
📍 INDIAN PAVILION
May 9 – November 22
Five artists explore shifting notions of home at a moment of rapid transformation in India — thinking through mobility, diaspora, and the relationship between people and place. The pavilion proposes home not as a fixed location but as an emotional space carried within the self, built from culture, personal mythology, and memory.
Why it matters: A quiet, resolute meditation on belonging — and what survives displacement.
Why it matters: A quiet, resolute meditation on belonging — and what survives displacement.
ENTANGLEMENTS: CONNECTIVITIES ACROSS BORDERS
📍 MONGOLIAN PAVILION
May 9 – November 22
Four artists draw on Mongolian zurag painting, natural materials, folklore, video game imagery, and ecological research to map histories of Eurasian diplomacy and trade — including the Mongol Empire's connection to Venice in the 13th century. The pavilion reconsiders Mongolia not as a fixed geography but as a dynamic field of exchange.
Why it matters: Deep-time connectivity in a moment of fortified borders — where interspecies relations and transnational histories propose a different kind of resilience.
Why it matters: Deep-time connectivity in a moment of fortified borders — where interspecies relations and transnational histories propose a different kind of resilience.
DANA AWARTANI — MAY YOUR TEARS NEVER DRY, YOU WHO WEEP OVER STONES
📍 SAUDI PAVILION
May 9 – November 22
Dana Awartani — born in Jeddah to Saudi and Palestinian parents, trained in Islamic geometry and illumination — recreates the region's traditional floor tiles in fragile, brittle materials that bear witness to how heritage weathers under forces of change. Her work moves between the texture of organic materials and the macro scale of shared cultural memory.
Why it matters: Heritage as vulnerability — and craft as a way of holding what is always at risk of disappearing.
Why it matters: Heritage as vulnerability — and craft as a way of holding what is always at risk of disappearing.
MONDI PRESENTI — WORLDS OF TODAY
📍 SIERRA LEONE PAVILION
May 9 – November 22
Sierra Leone's debut at the Biennale resists the gravitational pull of spectacle — unfolding not as a display of static objects but as a constellation of vital processes. The pavilion brings together artists from Sierra Leone, the ECOWAS region, and beyond, in a dialogue shaped by local and transnational perspectives. Among them, CIFRA artist Jacopo Di Cera presents Ciclica — a site-specific installation of a dancing figure moving across 36 upcycled screens, transforming climate data into a cosmogonic narrative of birth, life, and death.
Why it matters: A debut that listens rather than overwhelms — and a pavilion that proposes something more radical than aestheticising crisis.
Why it matters: A debut that listens rather than overwhelms — and a pavilion that proposes something more radical than aestheticising crisis.
Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026 (work in progress).
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
COLLATERAL EVENTS
NALINI MALANI — OF WOMAN BORN
📍 MAGAZZINI DEL SALE
May 9 – November 22
Nalini Malani's site-specific installation reworks the myth of Orestes — the son who killed his mother and was pardoned — as a lens for today's wars waged in the name of self-defense. Projections, layered imagery, and shadow play dissolve mythology, literature, and philosophy into immersive experience. A fearless ethical position on violence, displacement, and the silencing of women, delivered through one of the most distinctive media-based practices in contemporary art.
Why it matters: Mythological projection meets political urgency — where ancient narrative and technological mediation converge to make visible the bodies that bear the cost of conflict.
Why it matters: Mythological projection meets political urgency — where ancient narrative and technological mediation converge to make visible the bodies that bear the cost of conflict.
Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026 (work in progress).
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
LI YI-FAN — SCREEN MELANCHOLY
📍 PALAZZO DELLE PRIGIONI
May 9 – November 22
Taiwanese artist Li Yi-Fan examines how digital technology reshapes the relationship between images and human experience. Growing up alongside the birth of the internet, Li's work probes the melancholy embedded in our dependence on mediated images. Inside the historic prison palace, the exhibition stages an intimate confrontation between architectural confinement and digital enclosure.
Why it matters: A generation raised on screens turns the screen itself into subject — examining the emotional residue of a life lived through interfaces.
Why it matters: A generation raised on screens turns the screen itself into subject — examining the emotional residue of a life lived through interfaces.
Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026 (work in progress).
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
AS ABOVE, SO BELOW
📍 FABBRICA H3, EX CHURCH SANTI COSMO E DAMIANO, GIUDECCA
May 9 – June 8
Seven international artists transform a former church on the Giudecca into an immersive environment for ecological reflection — proposing the ocean not as a distant entity but as a living archive of the Earth's deep time. Marshmallow Laser Feast, Antoine Bertin, Yoko Shimizu, and CIFRA artist Almagul Menlibayeva, whose multimedia installation traces the ecological collapse of the Caspian Sea, are among the contributors.
Why it matters: Sound, light, and computational systems in a space shaped by devotion — where scientific observation and artistic imagination share the same water.
Why it matters: Sound, light, and computational systems in a space shaped by devotion — where scientific observation and artistic imagination share the same water.
Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026 (work in progress).
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
MORE EXHIBITIONS & EVENTS
AES+F — DIGITAL SAFARI: FABLES OF THE JUNGLE
📍 CAMPO SANTA MARGHERITA
May 5, 2026 (One-day screening)
Six young performers become animal–human hybrids moving through a digitally saturated rainforest. Their couture-like costumes and ritual masks sit between ceremony and spectacle, tenderness and menace. The jungle is more emblem than ecosystem, while the soundtrack — Mozart's Lacrimosa reimagined as a mechanical music box — transforms sublime mourning into uncanny, automated ritual. An updated vanitas where beauty and luxury are shadowed by ecological loss.
Why it matters: AES+F are among the most iconic and influential collectives in the history of media art. Here, their signature language — digital allegory at cinematic scale — meets the requiem, and the line between innocence and predation dissolves in spectacle.
Why it matters: AES+F are among the most iconic and influential collectives in the history of media art. Here, their signature language — digital allegory at cinematic scale — meets the requiem, and the line between innocence and predation dissolves in spectacle.
Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026 (work in progress).
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
DRIFT — SHY SOCIETY
📍 GRAND CANAL
May 3 – 10
Amsterdam-based studio DRIFT suspends Shy Society above the Grand Canal — a large-scale kinetic installation expanding their celebrated Shylights series. Luminous forms open and close like flowers, inspired by nyctinasty, the biological movement of plants responding to light. The night sky above the canal transforms into a floating garden of illuminated sculptures.
Why it matters: The canal becomes a screen, the sky becomes a garden — kinetic light art at architectural scale, where technology mimics the gentlest rhythms of the natural world.
Why it matters: The canal becomes a screen, the sky becomes a garden — kinetic light art at architectural scale, where technology mimics the gentlest rhythms of the natural world.
Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026 (work in progress).
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ — TRANSFORMING ENERGY
📍 GALLERIE DELL'ACCADEMIA
May 6 – October 19
Marina Abramović becomes the first living woman artist to receive a major exhibition at the Gallerie dell'Accademia. Marking her 80th birthday, the show unfolds across both the permanent collection and temporary exhibition spaces — a first in the institution's history. Abramović's pioneering performance practice enters into direct dialogue with Renaissance masterpieces, embedding durational art within the very heart of Venetian patrimony.
Why it matters: Performance meets the Renaissance canon — the body as medium placed among the masters, rewriting the history of the institution from within.
Why it matters: Performance meets the Renaissance canon — the body as medium placed among the masters, rewriting the history of the institution from within.
HELTER SKELTER — ARTHUR JAFA & RICHARD PRINCE
📍 FONDAZIONE PRADA VENEZIA
May 9 – November 22
Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince take over two floors of the Venetian palazzo — not with separate shows, but through thematic collisions. Over fifty works stage an unexpected kinship: Jafa's charged video assemblages and Prince's appropriation strategies both dig into the same American soil — Black musical traditions, subcultures, violence, unresolved history. New works by each artist sit alongside a collaboratively conceived zine, built from images the two exchanged while making the show.
Why it matters: Video as cultural archaeology — two of America's most restless image-makers lay bare a nation's visual unconscious, where protest and celebrity blur into the same frame.
Why it matters: Video as cultural archaeology — two of America's most restless image-makers lay bare a nation's visual unconscious, where protest and celebrity blur into the same frame.
Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026 (work in progress).
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland
Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Image: Hertta Kiiski, courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland