What you should not miss at the 2026 Venice Biennale | Venice Biennale 2026

Florentina Holzinger’s skinny jeans

He is well-known for his extreme performances and Florentina Holzinger raised the bar in Venice with a postapocalyptic theater opened and suspended upside down by the ringing of a giant bell. Inside was a woman riding a speedboat, two others suspended on a tree and one sitting on the bottom of a tank. Oh, and no one was wearing any clothes. Spectators were invited to use two toilets to clean up their urine and dump it into a tank – but what appeared to be a toilet disaster in another part of the pavilion indicated that the project was threatening to become more disruptive. It was all so wrong that four policemen came out while I was watching to ask me what was going on. It was immediately the talk of the town. AN
Austrian pavilion, Biennale Gardens

Sanya Kantarovskyterrifying

One of the best things about the Venice Biennale is that it gives you the chance to see modern art in an amazing historical setting. Kantarovsky, 44, is a talented artist who was born in Moscow and whose family moved to the US when he was 10. His paintings are like scenes from a very hard-hitting movie – just what’s going on when a naked man is kneeling down looking depressed under the bed while a dog sits happily on a pillow? They are displayed in bookcases with Murano glass accessories, and the exhibition culminates in a detailed sculpture of a boy’s head, also in Murano glass. The atmosphere is like a wonderland between centuries. AN
Basic Failure, Palazzo Loredan

Gabrielle Goliath‘s hypnotic mourners

Goliath was one of several artists who faced controversy leading up to the biennale. The South African government banned him from appearing at the event because his piece – titled Elegy – was “divisive” for the Palestinian poet. Goliath is up to the task in collaboration with the London arts center Ibraaz, at the Chiesa di Sant’Antonin, which is a short distance from the Giardini and the Arsenale. It’s worth the trip and it’s definitely the kind of visceral reality that’s been missing this year. The performance itself is mesmerizing, as the visuals show trained women with one big note. Then when their voices begin to fade, they step off the stage and are replaced by another singer. It was created as a mourning ceremony for women who have been killed due to sexual violence or racism, it was first created in 2015. LB
Elegy, Church of Sant’Antonin

Carrie Schneider‘s pictures curls

The main exhibition In Minor Keys may have turned some off, but there were several standouts: Akinbode Akinbiyi’s street paintings, which are suspended from the ceiling and taken throughout Francophone Africa; the Chicano archive of Guadalupe Rosales; A devastating book about lost businesses and lives in Gaza by Avi Mograbi. Perhaps chief among them are Carrie Schneider’s 1.5km-long curls, which echo Chris Marker’s 1962 film La Jetée. Another mission fails in the great caverns of the Arsenale, but Schneider catches on. LB
In the Minor Keys, Arsenale

Lydia Ourahmane‘s coin-slot art

British-Algerian artist Lydia Ourahmane he has created a beautiful, calm and stable exhibition, the parts of which are taken from the city of Venice, and will be reintroduced into his world when it is finished. A beautiful new wooden mountain will be given to the local coordinators; the Murano glass curtain was built by inmates of the women’s prison in Giudecca; contraption once used in the church to illuminate Bellini now switches on the lamp display when you put a euro coin in the slot. It’s an effective, thoughtful piece that works with, not against, the grain of the world. Later, the country spread the English-British language. CH
5 Works, Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation

Lawrence Abu Hamdan‘s audio detective work

Canicula, the exhibition of eight new films created by the Fondazione In Between Art Film, has a new launch and Lawrence Abu Hamdan in his guise as a “privileged ear”, where he investigates the tyranny of human rights using hard evidence. In 450XL: The Story of a Fugitive Sound, he collects testimony from demonstrators in Serbia who seem to have been dispersed from their peaceful, silent anti-government protests by a type of sonic weapon. It is well placed in the old music room of the hospital, surrounded by pictures of musicians, its 15 screens like protest signs. CH
Canicula, Hospital Complex

Zhanna Kadyrova’s origami deer

The giant concrete deer hanging precariously from a crane on a flatbed truck near the entrance to the Giardini has flown to eastern and central Europe from the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. It was originally designed for the park by the artist Zhanna Kadyrova in 2018 – then, in 2024, in the fourth and difficult attempt, it was transferred. In the Ukrainian arena at the Arsenale, watch moving pictures of the origami deer’s journey as they travel the streets, stop in various European cities, and are welcomed by refugees from Pokrovsk, which is now controlled by the Russian army. CH
Ukrainian Pavilion, Biennale Gardens

Zhang Zhoujie’s digital furniture

There’s plenty on the main display to keep you from feeling down about the world – it lives up to its title, In Minor Keys. But if you make it all the way to Arsenale’s end, you’ll find that some of the Chinese champions are very different. In a dark, dimly lit environment, 10 of them present 10 off-the-wall ideas for how art can bring human and artificial intelligence. There are cartoons by Jiang Suxuan, a robot traditionally drawn by Nie Shichang and Chinese mythology that was turned into a video game by the Game Science team. Most of all, it ends in the grass of “digital chairs” by Zhang Zhoujie – and after all this, you will really need to sit down. AN
Chinese pavilion, Arsenale

The a dog

The Austrian arena may be the most artistic this year, but in its shadow there was another part of the biennale that drew crowds and didn’t need a nudity or someone hanging upside down from a bell to grab attention. Outside the Polish square, surrounded by a neat white fence was the tip of the nestwhich caused confusion during the media screening. Was it a work of art? Or some kind of ornithological provocation? No, it was just a bird who thought the Giardini was as good a place as anyone to set up shop. Taking a selfie with a photographer is a must. LB