At long last, the 2022 Venice Biennale is finally almost here. Delayed a year by the pandemic, this iteration of the famed Italian art show, the Biennale’s 59th, is currently set to run from April 23 to November 27.
Often, the biggest attraction is the main exhibition, which this year is being overseen by Cecilia Alemani. Placing a focus on Surrealism and an unprecedented emphasis on women artists, that show will be titled “The Milk of Dreams,” in reference to Leonora Carrington’s writings.
But just as exciting are the 90-plus national pavilions around that show. Some of those pavilions will be in dialogue with Alemani’s exhibition, though most will not. Their topics will range from the preservation of peat bogs in Patagonia to Black women’s resilience, from economic decline in Italy to the Ghanaian flag, from the German Pavilion as a political site itself to “nothing” at all at the Croatian Pavilion.
Below, a guide to the dozens of national pavilions that have so far been announced, along with four participants that are producing Biennale-sanctioned collateral events. The majority of the pavilions are located in the Arsenale and the Giardini—the two main venues for the Biennale’s main exhibition—though some are sited at various locations across the city.
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Albania
Albania will be one of the few countries to be represented solely by a dead artist at this year’s Venice Biennale. Lumturi Blloshmi, who died of Covid-related complications in 2020, will be given a posthumous survey in the form of the 2022 Albanian Pavilion, with around a dozen pieces covering the span of the artist’s oeuvre. She’s the first woman to represent Albania at the Venice Biennale. Adela Demetja, the curator organizing the pavilion, told Euronews Albania that Blloshmi was “one of the first Albanian artists [to] have incorporated performance in her work.”
Location: Arsenale
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Argentina
Image Credit: Courtesy Piedras Mónica Heller, whose paintings and videos have focused on what new technologies have done to our emotions, will represent Argentina. According to Terremoto, her pavilion will include 15 modules displaying 3D animations, marking the first time that the site has played host to a video installation. Alejo Ponce de León, who will curate the pavilion, said that the lack of overt politics in her work accounts for “why she can offer radical solutions to the contemporary problem of the artistic image.”
Location: Arsenale
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Armenia
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist Andrius Arutiunian will represent Armenia at the Venice Biennale with a new series of sound works called “Gharib.” Set in a pavilion curated by Anne Davidian and Elena Sorokina, these new pieces will explore forms of estrangement and belonging. A website for the pavilion teases the presentation using a puzzling phrase: “One starts by merely imagining real things. Eventually, the real things themselves manifest.”
Location: Campo della Tana, Castello 2125
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Australia
Image Credit: Photo Zan Wimberley Sound artist Marco Fusinato will represent Australia in the 59th Venice Biennale, and Alexie Glass-Kantor, executive director of Artspace in Sydney, will organize Fusinato’s exhibition. In his work, which was also included in the main exhibition of the 2015 Venice Biennale, curated by Okwui Enwezor, Fusinato explores modes of perception. Pieces by the artist also figured in the Museum of Modern Art’s first-ever exhibition of sound art, which went on view in 2013. Fusinato’s pavilion, titled “DESASTRES,” was produced entirely at home, since the artist could not access his studio during Australia’s strict lockdown. In a rather ambitious gesture, Fusinato himself will be on hand to play electric guitar at the Biennale, in an elusive project that will act as a continuation of the artist’s long-term interest in the thin boundary between order and disorder.
Location: Giardini
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Austria
Image Credit: Photo Christian Benesch Collaborators Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl will represent Austria at the exhibition. Seeking to upend the traditional format of exhibitions, the artists have promised that their exhibition will pay mind to the pavilion’s unusual structure, which includes a colonnade that runs through its interior. Titled “Invitation of the Soft Machine and Her Angry Body Parts,” their exhibition will accordingly be divided in two, with one half for each artist. Knebl will investigate sociopolitical issues of the 1970s, while Scheirl will create what is being billed as a “walk-in, ‘accessible’ painting”; both halves will display an interest in the politics of desire. The Austrian pavilion will be curated by Karola Kraus, director of the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien.
Location: Giardini
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Azerbaijan
Image Credit: Courtesy Azerbaijani Pavilion There still hasn’t been an official announcement for the 2022 Azerbaijani Pavilion, though the Venice Biennale’s website lists these artists as its participants: Narmin Israfilova, Infinity, Ramina Saadatkhan, Fidan Novruzova, Fidan Akhundova, Sabiha Khankishiyeva, and Agdes Baghirzade. Emin Mammadov is named as the pavilion’s curator.
Location: Procuratie Vecchie San Marco 153/a/139
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Bangladesh
Image Credit: Courtesy Bangladeshi Pavilion There still hasn’t been an official announcement for the 2022 Bangladeshi Pavilion, though the Venice Biennale’s website lists these artists as its participants: Jamal Uddin Ahmed, Mohammad Iqbal, Harun-Ar-Rashid, Sumon Wahed, Promity Hossain, Mohammad Eunus, Marco Cassarà, Franco Marrocco, and Giuseppe Diego Spinelli. Viviana Vannucci is named as the pavilion’s curator.
Location: Palazzo Pisani Revedin, San Marco 4013
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Belgium
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist Francis Alÿs, who showed work in the Iraq Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, will represent Belgium at exhibition’s 59th edition. Hilde Teerlinck, a curator at the Han Nefkens Foundation in Barcelona, is organizing the country’s pavilion, where Alÿs will show a new work building on his video Children’s Games #19: Haram Soccer (2017). The artist’s politically-minded films and videos often focus on borders and conflict, his pieces have also been shown in main exhibitions of past Venice Biennales (in 1999, 2001, and 2007).
Location: Giardini
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Bolivia
Image Credit: Felix Hörhager/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images There still hasn’t been an official announcement for the 2022 Bolivian Pavilion, but the Venice Biennale’s website lists Warmichacha as the country’s representative. Roberto Aguilar Quisbert is listed as the pavilion’s curator.
Location: Artspace4rent, Cannaregio 4120
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Brazil
Image Credit: Photo Jéssica Bernardo/Courtesy the artist Hot off organizing the Bienal de São Paulo’s 2021 edition, Jacopo Crivelli Visconti is curating the Venice Biennale’s 2022 pavilion. He’s picked Jonathas de Andrade, an artist whose videos have drawn widespread acclaim abroad. De Andrade, whose work often focuses on under-represented communities in Brazil, will once more mull what constitutes national identity in his home country with a pavilion titled “Com o coração saindo pela boca” (“With the heart coming out of the mouth”). A touchstone for the pavilion will be a giant sculpture of a reclining woman often used to offer anatomical lessons to youths. Known as Eva, de Andrade encountered it as a child. In Venice, he will show photo-based works, interactive sculptures, and a video considering the human body in a presentation that recalls a science fair.
Location: Giardini
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Bulgaria
Michail Michailov, who is best known internationally for formerly being a member of the collective Gelitin, will represent Bulgaria this year. Curated by Irina Batkova, the pavilion will be titled “There you are.” According to its organizers, the pavilion will resemble a “minimalist and absurd environment” that will feature, among other things, elements that recall detritus left behind by humans. The artist has spent time drawing stains and pieces of dust found in his studio, and that process has informed the pavilion itself.
Location: Spazio Ravà, San Polo 1100
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Canada
Image Credit: ©Evann Kheraj/Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner Canada has chosen video artist and photographer Stan Douglas for its pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale. In his work, Douglas centers the narratives of historically marginalized people, and he has previously exhibited at four past editions of La Biennale. At the Venice Biennale, Douglas will focus specifically on the years 2011 and 1848. The former was the year that Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring took place; the latter was the year of upheavals of various kinds across Europe. Within the Giardini, at the country’s pavilion, Douglas will show four large-scale photographs, but make sure to also visit the show’s other site in the Dorsoduro neighborhood, where he’s exhibiting a new two-screen video installation that promises to be the main attraction. The National Gallery of Canada in Ontario is the institution commissioning Canada’s 2022 pavilion, with Reid Shier curating.
Location: Giardini and Magazzini del Sale n5
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Cameroon
Cameroon’s inaugural pavilion at the Biennale is likely going to be talked about for multiple reasons, only one of which is that, unlike the majority of pavilions, this one isn’t being funded by the country’s government. (Despite this, it is commissioned by the Cameroonian Ministry of Culture.) Instead, it is being underwritten by the collective Global Crypto Art DAO, which will organize what is believed to be the first-ever NFT show at the Venice Biennale as part of the pavilion. Francis Nathan Abiamba, Angéle Etoundi Essamba, Shay Frisch, Justine Gaga, Salifou Lindou, Umberto Mariani, Matteo Mezzadri, and Jorge R. Pombo are set to show at the pavilion, which is titled “The Times of the Chimera.” Its curators are Paul Emmanuel Loga Mahop and Sandro Orlandi Stagl.
Location: Liceo Artistico Guggenheim, Dorsoduro 2613 and Palazzo Ca’ Bernardo Molon, San Polo 2186
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Chile
Image Credit: Photo Benjamin Echazarreta In an unconventional move, Chile has selected not just one representative for its pavilion this year but four: artist Ariel Bustamante, art historian Carla Macchiavello, architect Alfredo Thiermann, and filmmaker Dominga Sotomayor. Their pavilion, curated by Camila Marambio and titled “Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol,” views Indigenous struggle for survival and the fight against climate change as being intimately related. Using the preservation of peat bogs in Patagonia as a jumping-off point, the pavilion will focus on the persistence of the Selk’nam people who live near them.
Location: Arsenale
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China
Image Credit: Courtesy Chinese Pavilion China’s pavilion will this year be given the title “Meta-Scape,” effectively acting as a modern take on the concept of jing, which refers to a fusion of man and machine. A sculpture called Snowman by Wang Yuyang will dominate part of the pavilion; it resembles a knot of triangular forms, and will be set within a garden. Also on view at this pavilion, curated by Zhang Zikang, will be works by Xu Lei and Liu Jiayu.
Location: Arsenale
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Croatia
Image Credit: Photo Sophia Elizabeth Bennett Croatia’s representative at the 2022 Venice Biennale is Tomo Savić-Gecan, an artist who has said he exhibits “nothing” as a practice. Savić-Gecan’s work for the pavilion will rely on articles published by a number of media outlets that will be analyzed for AI, which will then provide instructions to five performers situated around Venice. A release about the pavilion promises that the performers will undertake “carefully choreographed and extremely minimal movements,” but that these motions won’t be obvious unless you know what you’re looking for. Since the location of these performances will change frequently, it’s best to check the Croatian Pavilion’s site for more details. On tap to curate will be Elena Filipovic, who runs a closely watched exhibition program at the Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland. The pavilion’s title is perhaps unsurprisingly offbeat: Untitled (Croatian Pavilion).
Location: via Garibaldi 1513, Castello
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Cuba
Image Credit: Photo Riccardo Tosetto There still hasn’t been an official announcement for the 2022 Cuban Pavilion, but the Venice Biennale’s website lists Rafael Villares, Kcho, and Giuseppe Stampone as the country’s representatives. Nelson Ramirez de Arellano Conde is listed as the pavilion’s curator.
Location: Isola di San Servolo
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Denmark
Image Credit: Courtesy Art Hub Copenhagen. Little is known about the Danish Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, although it has been announced that Uffe Isolotto will be representing the country and that Jacob Lillemose will be curating Isolotto’s presentation. On Instagram, Isolotto has been teasing his Danish Pavilion, titled “We Walked the Earth,” using a series of bizarre renderings of futuristic humans and hybrid animals, along with descriptions referring to a Danish farm in operation years from now.
Location: Giardini
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Egypt
Image Credit: Courtesy Egyptian Ministry of Culture Weaam El-Masry, Mohamed Shoukry, and Ahmed El-Shaer were tapped to represent Egypt in January 2022. The three artists are “among the most prominent Egyptian contemporary artists,” Ahram Online reported, and the three are set to exhibit together in a show called “Eden Like Garden.” A curator for the pavilion wasn’t named by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture in its announcement.
Location: Giardini
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Estonia
Image Credit: Photo Dénes Farkas/Courtesy CCA Estonia At the invitation of the Mondriaan Fund, Estonia will take over the Dutch pavilion, located in the show’s main exhibition grounds in the Giardini, for the upcoming Biennale. (The Netherlands will host its participation elsewhere in the city.) The country has participated in the Venice Biennale since 1997, and for its participation in the 2022 edition, the Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art has selected artists Kristina Norman and Bita Razavi to present a collaborative project, titled “Orchidelirium: An Appetite for Abundance,” which will look at the work of the underknown, 20th-century Estonian artist Emily Rosaly Saal, who made watercolors and paintings of tropical plants. Norman is a Tallin-based artist who also represented Estonia at the Biennale in 2009, and Razavi is a Tehran-born artist who works between Helsinki and the Estonian countryside. Their participation is curated by Tallinn Art Hall’s Corina L. Apostol.
Location: Giardini
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Finland
Image Credit: IDA ENEGREN/FRAME CONTEMPORARY ART FINLAND Finland has picked video and performance artist Pilvi Takala for its pavilion at La Biennale. The work Takala will present, a new video installation called Close Watch, will draw on Takala’s own experiences working as a qualified security guard. The specific focus of the piece will be workshops that she developed during a six-month stint where she worked at a shopping mall in Finland. The Finnish pavilion will be curated by Christina Li and is commissioned and produced by Frame Contemporary Art Finland.
Location: Giardini
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France
Image Credit: ©DR Zineb Sedira, who creates video installations and photographs exploring memory, will represent France at the storied exhibition. Based in London, the artist has previously exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Montreal, the Tate Britain, and other international institutions. Sedira will be the first artist of Algerian descent to represent the country at the Venice Biennale, where she will debut a new film called Les Rêves n’ont pas de titre (Dreams Have No Titles), which will deal with the groundswell of political activism in France, Algeria, and Italy during the 1960s and ’70s and its influence on filmmaking of the era. Yasmina Reggad, Sam Bardaouil, and Till Fellrath have been lined up to curate the pavilion.
Location: Giardini
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Georgia
Image Credit: Courtesy In-between Conditions The duo Mariam Natroshvili and Detu Jincharadze will represent Georgia at the Venice Biennale with a pavilion titled “I Pity the Garden.” It’s set to take the form of a surreal installation with, at its center, a VR experience called Ghost Garden, which will envision plants that have become extinct. “This ecological crisis, in real life and represented here in VR, is one of the signs of the end,” the pavilion’s announcement reads. The curatorial platform In-between Conditions is organizing the project.
Location: Spazio Punch, Fondamenta S. Biagio, 800/O, Giudecca
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Germany
Image Credit: Photo Jens Ziehe Maria Eichhorn, who is representing Germany at the Venice Biennale this year, is known for her conceptually oriented work that has taken the form of behind-the-scenes transactions and documentation of them. Whether her new work for the German Pavilion will be similar remains to be seen, although she has hinted that she will explicitly deal with the political context of the structure, which was once adorned with the Nazi imperial eagle. Speaking to Museum Ludwig director Yilmaz Dziewior, who is curating the pavilion this time, Eichhorn said, “The work is accessible. It can be experienced both conceptually and—physically and in motion—on site.”
Location: Giardini
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Ghana
Image Credit: ©Na Chainkua Reindorf When Ghana made its Venice Biennale debut in 2019, its pavilion was among the most celebrated offerings at the exhibition. Now, Ghana is returning with curator Nana Oforiatta Ayim at the helm. She’s organizing a show called “Black Star—The Museum as Freedom,” which views the Ghanaian flag as a symbol of freedom. It will feature work by artist Na Chainkua Reindorf, Afroscope, and Diego Araúja, along with an architectural design courtesy of DK Osseo Arare. “As we outgrow and move beyond ill-fitting systems; new ones, not yet defined, that draw on rich histories, not with nostalgia but with discernment of hindsight and experience; are forming,” Oforiatta Ayim said of her pavilion.
Location: Arsenale
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Great Britain
Image Credit: ©Sarah Weal The London-based artist Sonia Boyce will be the first Black woman to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale. Boyce’s drawings, paintings, and photographs have featured portraits of Black subjects and her work has alluded to her Afro-Caribbean heritage. The artist’s practice also spans video, audio, and performance work, and her pieces can be found in the collections of Tate Modern, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and other institutions. Emma Ridgway will curate Boyce’s presentation.
Location: Giardini
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Greece
Image Credit: Courtesy Onassis Foundation At this year’s Greek Pavilion, which bears the intriguing name “Oedipus in Search of Colonus,” Loukia Alavanou will show a new VR work and sound installation that draw connections between her home country’s ancient heritage and Roma communities in the Nea Zoi region in Greece, northwest of Athens. Oedipus was exiled to the city of Colonus, as the myth goes, and Alavanou believes there are comparisons to be made with the Roma people, who have also been cast out of Athens by sociopolitical means. The pavilion, its organizers have said, will envision “art [as] an impossible place.” Heinz Peter Schwerfel will curate the exhibition.
Location: Giardini
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Grenada
Grenada’s pavilion is somewhat unusual this year in that the artist collective chosen to represent the country didn’t exist until the exhibition started to be organized. That group, the Cypher Art Collective of Grenada, consists of seven artists who came together during the pandemic. At the Biennale, they will focus on the tradition of Shakespeare Mas, a ritual celebration of the Bard’s writings that has been integral to the neighboring island of Carriacou, which a dependency of Grenada. Drawing on research conducted over the past couple years, the collective will present a new two-channel film installation, paintings, and more that will be part of a presentation organized by Daniele Radini Tedeschi.
Location: Il Giardino Bianco Art SpaceVia Giuseppe Garibaldi, 1814
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Guatemala
Image Credit: Photo Felix Hörhager/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images There still hasn’t been an official announcement for the 2022 Guatemalan Pavilion, but the Venice Biennale’s website lists Christian Escobar as both the artist representing the country and the curator of the pavilion.
Location: SPUMA – Space For The Arts Giudecca 800/R
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Hong Kong
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist and Blindspot Gallery Angela Su is representing Hong Kong this year, in a presentation being overseen by curator Freya Chou. (The Hong Kong presentation, unlike most of the pavilions here, is not recognized by the Biennale as a national entry, rendering it ineligible for the Golden Lion for best national participation. It is officially considered a collateral exhibition, however.) While Su hasn’t detailed what her project will be, Chou has said it will be a further extension of the artist’s research-based practice, which places a “focus on the interrelations between our state of being and scientific technology.” After its run in Venice, the work will head to the M+ museum, which co-organized the presentation.
Location: Arsenale
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Hungary
Image Credit: Photo Bíró Dávid Hungary’s 2022 Venice Biennale pavilion is being done by artist Zsófia Keresztes under the supervision of curator Mónika Zsikla, making this the first time ever that both the pavilion’s representative and organizer are women. Titled “After Dreams, I Dare to Defy the Damages,” the pavilion will feature new sculptures by Keresztes that mull the fluidity of identity. After showing at the Venice Biennale, those works will come to the Ludwig Museum in Budapest.
Location: Giardini
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Iceland
Image Credit: Courtesy Icelandic Art Center Sigurður Guðjónsson, who is known for his multimedia installations that produce a range of sensory experiences, was selected to rep Iceland in at the 2022 Biennale. The artist has exhibited his work at the National Gallery of Iceland, the Reykjavik Art Museum, the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Bergen Kunsthall in Norway, and other international institutions. Recent presentations at Iceland’s pavilion—like Christoph Büchel’s 2015 installation The Mosque, which was shut down by Venice police—have drawn significant attention in past years. Mónica Bello will curate this year’s presentation.
Location: Arsenale
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Ireland
Image Credit: Courtesy Irish Pavilion In her sculptures composed of steel, wood, glass, and other elements Niamh O’Malley seeks to portray invisible forces visually. Motion and transparency have formed two of her conceptual concerns, and it appears that she will continue her inquiry in the nature of both of them in her Venice Biennale pavilion for Ireland, which is being organized by the curatorial team of Dublin’s Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. Titled “Gather,” the project will tour Ireland after its run in Venice.
Location: Arsenale
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Israel
Image Credit: Courtesy Braverman Gallery Ilit Azoulay is best known for her conceptual artworks that regard photography as something akin to everyday detritus. The images she makes are often impartial ones, with pieces cropped out, and she provides context in the form of text and audio. For a project called “Queendom” at the Venice Biennale, she will present a new body of work consisting of photography and a sound installation. Shelley Harten will curate the pavilion.
Location: Giardini
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Italy
Image Credit: Photo Elena Andreato Unlike most countries who show at the Venice Biennale, Italy tends to give its pavilion over to ambitious multi-person exhibitions. But, for the first time in recent memory, now it’s fallen in line with almost everyone else and gone with just one artist: Gian Maria Tosatti. Critic Eugenio Viola will curate Tosatti’s pavilion, which will feature a site-specific installation called History of Night and Destiny of Comets that is set to consider an epic array of topics related to economic and industrial development in Italy.
Location: Arsenale
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Ivory Coast
Image Credit: Felix Hörhager/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images There still hasn’t been an official announcement for the 2022 Ivorian Pavilion, but the Venice Biennale’s website lists Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, Abdoulaye Diarrassouba dit Aboudia, Armand Boua, Saint-Etienne Yéanzi dit Yeanzi, Laetitia Ky, and Aron Demetz as the country’s representatives. Massimo Scaringella and Alessandro Romanini are listed as the pavilion’s curators.
Location: Magazzino del Sale 3, Dorsoduro 264
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Japan
For its Venice Biennale pavilion, Japan is spotlighting the work of Dumb Type, a collective that was founded in 1984. Its members include Shiro Takatani and special participant Ryuichi Sakamoto, and the group has often critiqued the flow of information in mass media through sprawling installations. Commissioned by the Japan Foundation, Dumb Type’s Venice Biennale pavilion seems to deal with the upheaval of the moment, as evidenced by an artist statement that came with the pavilion’s announcement in 2019: “In a world of fragmented chaos in which the systems we believed in are on verge of collapse, what had once appeared to be fact now seems uncertain, and people assume what they want to believe in as being the ‘truth.’”
Location: Giardini
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Kazakhstan
Image Credit: Courtesy the artists Kazakhstan was initially set to have its first-ever Venice Biennale pavilion in 2019, but those plans were dashed after its budget was severely cut. Now, the country is trying once more to host a presentation at the world’s biggest art festival. This year, it will bring to Venice work by the ORTA Collective, which plans to pay homage to Sergey Kalmykov, a Russian avant-garde artist who made decorations for a number of theatrical productions. Its curator, the dealer Meruyert Kaliyeva, has made a point that she avoided seeking government funding for the pavilion in an attempt to avoid having to “factor in political decisions.” Kazakhstan recently underwent a period of violent unrest, and some have questioned whether the country’s participation this year at the Venice Biennale will ultimately be possible.
Location: Spazio Arco, Dorsoduro 1485
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Kenya
Image Credit: Photo Felix Hörhager/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images There still hasn’t been an official announcement for the 2022 Kenyan Pavilion, but the Venice Biennale’s website lists Dickens Otieno, Syowia Kyambi, Kaloki Nyamai, and Wanja Kimani as the country’s representatives. Jimmy Ogonga is listed as the pavilion’s curator.
Location: Fàbrica 33, Cannaregio 5063
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Korea
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist Yunchul Kim’s Korean Pavilion is titled “Gyre,” and is expected to feature seven installations, three of which are new. One of those new works is set to be able to detect subatomic particles known as muons; each time the glass sculpture senses one, it will flash with light. Other works will appear to breathe, further imploding the boundary between the manmade and the natural. Before details were revealed in 2022, the pavilion attracted attention, much of it unwanted, for its curatorial team. Over the summer in 2021, members of that team began to resign after allegations of conflict of interest. Youngchul Lee was ultimately named as the pavilion’s new artistic director.
Location: Giardini
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Kosovo
To meditate on a state that he has labeled “living between two worlds,” Jakup Ferri creates paintings, tapestries, and more that draw on local Kosovar styles as well as modes borrowed from various Western countries. He’s described his practice as an attempt to ensure that Kosovo, which is only recognized by about 50 percent of the U.N.-member states, does not remain invisible to those outside it. His Biennale pavilion for the country where he was born (he is now based between Amsterdam and Prishtina) will invoke similar themes in a presentation organized by Inke Arns.
Location: Arsenale
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Kyrgyzstan
Image Credit: Photo We Are the Nomads Like its neighboring country of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan will make its Venice Biennale debut with a pavilion by artist Firouz FarmanFarmaian. Working with craftswomen based in the country, FarmanFarmaian will create 10 hand-stitched works that refer to the ancient region of Tur, which is believed to have spanned Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, as well as parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Titled “The Gates of Turan,” the pavilion will be an “immemorial nomadic mythical cosmogony,” the artist has said. Janet Rady will curate the presentation.
Location: Hydro Space, Giudecca Art District, Giudecca 211/C
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Latvia
Image Credit: ©Kristīne Madjare Taking their cues from a sentence by James Baldwin, a visit to a Zen Buddhist monastery in California, and debates around queer communities in the Baltic region, the duo Skuja Braden will deal with what constitutes a home in a pavilion titled “Selling Water by the River.” Andra Silapētere and Solvita Krese will curate the pavilion, which will feature works made in porcelain that take the form of dishes, hoses, and more. In their conception, the artists imagine home as something fluid and constantly evolving—not unlike a river itself.
Location: Arsenale
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Lebanon
Image Credit: Courtesy Aline Asmar d’Amman Perhaps more so than other pavilions at this Venice Biennale, the one for Lebanon will undergo a particularly grand transformation. Architect Aline Asmar d’Amman has been tapped to create scenography for the pavilion that will, according to a release, evoke “the shapes of the mythical contemporary ruins of the Lebanese urban landscape: Joseph Philippe Karam’s downtown cinema ‘The Egg’ and Oscar Niemeyer’s Rachid Karami International Exhibition Center in Tripoli, which was built in the midst of the civil war and never used.” On view amid the unusual architecture will be paintings by Ayman Baalbaki and a film by Danielle Arbid. These works are being shown as part of an exhibition called “The World in the Image of Man,” with Nada Ghandour lined up to curate.
Location: Arsenale
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Lithuania
Image Credit: Photo Milda Zabaraskauite In 2019, Lithuania surprised everyone by taking the Golden Lion for Sun & Sea, a performance that is still traveling the world. This year, the country is betting on awing everyone once more with a pavilion by Robertas Narkus. The artist, who is working with curator Neringa Bumblienė, is undertaking a project called “Gut Feeling,” which puns its titular idiomatic expression to mean both a hunch and a biological phenomenon. Intriguingly, Narkus’s project won’t only appear at the pavilion—it will also have roots in Castello, a plaza in Venice that remains a holdout amid a culture of gentrification sweeping the city. The artist has said his new work has three components: “my personal perspective, the stories of real and invented characters, and the symbiosis with the kingdom of bacteria.”
Location: Castello 3200 and 3206, Campo de le Gate
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Luxembourg
Image Credit: Courtesy Nosbaum Reding Tina Gillen will represent Luxembourg at the 59th Venice Biennale, where she will present the project Faraway So Close. Gillen’s exhibition, which considers the relationship between exteriority and interiority, will include new paintings and site-specific works as well as a scenographic device. The artist, who teaches at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and lives in Brussels, has previously shown work at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Platform Garanti in Istanbul, and other venues. Christophe Gallois is curating the pavilion.
Location: Arsenale
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Malta
Image Credit: Via Wikimedia Commons Malta’s 2022 Venice Biennale will take as its reference point a work made more than five centuries ago: Caravaggio’s painting The Beheading of St. John the Baptist (1608), which is housed in a Valletta cathedral. Through a new installation, artists Arcangelo Sassolino, Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci, and Brian Schembri will transport themes culled from the Caravaggio painting to the present day. Keith Sciberras and Jeffrey Uslip will curate the presentation.
Location: Arsenale
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Mexico
Image Credit: Photo Felix Hörhager/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images Taking what its organizers call a “decolonial perspective,” Mexico’s pavilion will assemble four artists whose work seeks to channel methods of portraying knowledge that exist outside colonial structures. The four artists set to participate—Mariana Castillo Deball, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Fernando Palma Rodríguez, and Santiago Borja Charles—are taking part as a result of a change in Mexico’s selection process that enabled a group of artists to represent the country for the first time. Catalina Lozano and Mauricio Marcin are curating the pavilion, which is titled “Hasta que los cantos broten” (Until the Sprouts Spring).
Location: Arsenale
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Mongolia
Image Credit: Courtesy Art Space 976 According to the Venice Biennale’s website, Munkhtsetseg Jalkhaajav will represent Mongolia. Many of Jalkhaajav’s works feature a human-crow hybrid that alludes to a traditional notion in Mongolian medicine that birds can represent a life force. In addition to her paintings, Jalkhaajav makes collages, which involve “sewing pieces of stretch fabric are an act of trying to create wholesomeness by putting together separate pieces, like repairing,” the artist has said. Perhaps in tribute to that idea, the pavilion, curated by Gantuya Badamgarav, will be titled “A Journey Through Vulnerability.”
Location: Castello 2131
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Montenegro
Image Credit: Photo Felix Hörhager/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images Details about Montenegro’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale are sparse, though it’s known that it will be curated by Natalija Vujošević. Part of the reason why so little information is available, though, may be because of how unusual it appears to be. Titled “The Art Of Holding Hands as we break through the sedimentary cloud,” the pavilion will include works by “Dante Buu, Lidija Delić & Ivan Šuković, Darko Vučković, Jelena Tomašević, Art Collection of Non-Aligned Countries (Zuzana Chalupova, Rene Portocarrero, unknown author from Iraq and Bernard Matemera,” according to the Venice Biennale site.
Location: Palazzo Malipiero, San Marco 3078-3079/A, Ramo Malipiero
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Namibia
Image Credit: Courtesy Namibian Pavilion Namibia’s first outing at the Venice Biennale could be a rather mysterious one. Curated by Marco Furio Ferrario, the pavilion is expected to feature a series of stone sculptures resembling humans that began appearing in Namibia’s Kuene region several years ago. Their maker is an anonymous artist named RENN, whom Ferrario says he identified while curating the pavilion, which is titled “A Bridge to the Desert.” But just before the Biennale’s opening, Artnet News reported that there was doubt about whether the pavilion would come to pass as planned. A petition began circulating in which certain people in Namibia decried the pavilion as providing an “antiquated and problematic view” of the country and its art scene. After the petition’s publication, a leader funder for the pavilion pulled out, and the show’s sponsor also said it would no longer provide support.
Location: Isola della Certosa
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Nepal
Image Credit: Photo by Chhiring Dorje Gurung, courtesy of the artists Among those countries making their debut at the Venice Biennale is Nepal, which has made a concerted push in recent years to make its presence in the international art world more widely known. Nepal’s representative will be artist Tsherin Sherpa, who, under the aegis of curators Sheelasha Rajbhandari and Hit Man Gurung, will make new works resisting colonial narratives about the country that will involve the use of materials taken from the Asia Highlands. His pavilion will be titled “Tales of Muted Spirits – Dispersed Threads – Twisted Shangri-La.”
Location: Castello 994
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The Netherlands
Image Credit: Photo Joseph Marzolla melanie bonajo will represent the Netherlands at La Biennale with a presentation organized by Maaike Gouwenberg, Geir Haraldseth, and Soraya Pol. bonajo, who makes films as well as installations and performance pieces, examines the ways in which technology can cultivate feelings of alienation and intimacy. Their Venice Biennale pavilion will be host to a new video installation, When the body says Yes, that responds to a desire for touch during a lonely moment. “With this project we want to reprioritise the body as a vehicle for connection and safety, cultivating touch and friendship as a form of activism,” bonajo said.
Location: Chiesetta della Misericordia of Art Events, Cannaregio
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New Zealand
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist and Milford Galleries, Aotearoa New Zealand In September 2019, New Zealand became the first country to announce its plans for the next edition of the Venice Biennale. Yuki Kihara will be the first artist of Pacific descent to represent the country when she presents work at the exhibition in 2022. Kihara’s photographs, videos, and performances often examine the weight of histories of colonialism. At the Venice Biennale, Kihara will debut a new project called Paradise Camp that comprises photographs, video, and archival materials. Its focus will be people who identify as Fa’afafine, the Samoan word for the third gender, which translates to “in the manner of a woman.” The project will contend with stereotypes and misunderstandings about Fa’afafine people. Natalie King, a professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia, will curate the presentation.
Location: Arsenale
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North Macedonia
Image Credit: Courtesy the artists For their pavilion for North Macedonia, Robert Jankuloski and Monika Moteska will create an installation that includes video, photography, and various objects. Titled Landscape Experience, it will explore the destruction of the natural world by humanity in an attempt to allow the artists to “scratch and delve deeper into the meaning of our existence and our responsibility.” Ana Frangovska and Sanja Kojic Mladenov will serve as the pavilion’s curators.
Location: Scuola dei Laneri, Santa Croce 113/A
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Oman
Image Credit: Courtesy National Pavilion of the Sultanate of Oman Art historian Aisha Stoby was picked to organized Oman’s first-ever pavilion at the Venice Biennale, which is set to feature a range of artists who hail from the country or have connections to it. Among them is Anwar Sonya, who has been regarded as one of the country’s foremost living artists, and the late sound artist Raiya Al Rawahi, whose final works will be shown here. Also set to participate in the show are Hassan Meer, Budoor Al Riyami, and Radhika Khimki.
Location: Arsenale
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Palestine
Image Credit: Courtesy Zawyeh Gallery Attempts to bring Palestine to the Venice Biennale have previously proven controversial—in 2002, for example, curator Francesco Bonami proposed hosting a Palestinian Pavilion at the biennial, only to be accused of anti-Semitism in the Italian press. This year, there won’t be a Palestinian Pavilion either, but there will be a collateral exhibition courtesy of the Palestine Museum in Woodbridge, Connecticut. Titled “From Palestine with Art,” the show will be curated by Nancy Nesvet, a curator at the museum, and will feature 19 artists with ties to Palestine, including Ibrahim Alazza, Mohamed Khalil, and Rana Matar. Adding an explicitly political dimension to the show, there will be another presence from Palestine as well: a live tree that will be hung with keys from refugees.
Location: Palazzo Mora, Room 8, Cannaregio 3659
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Peru
Through painting and collage, Herbert Rodriguez has dealt head-on with the darker side of Peruvian society, meditating on the destruction of the Amazon, authoritarian governments in the country, and the dangers posed to Indigenous peoples there. His Venice Biennale pavilion, “Peace is a Corrosive Promise,” will be curated by Jorge Villarcorta and Viola Varotto.
Location: Arsenale
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The Phillippines
Don’t come to the Philippines’s pavilion expecting to see only art—there will be works in other mediums also on view. For a presentation called “This is our gathering/Andi taku e sana, Amung taku di sana,” artist Gerardo Tan, musicologist Felicidad A. Prudente, and weaver Sammy Buhle will have on view an exhibition that draws out connections between sound and textiles. “The exhibition involves an interdisciplinary approach to transmitting culture with sound and textile, weaving the customary and the contemporary across the archipelago,” the pavilion’s announcement reads. Yael Buencamino Borromeo and Arvin Jason Flores will curate the pavilion.
Location: Arsenale
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Poland
Image Credit: Photo Daniel Rumiancew Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, who is best known for her colorful patchwork pieces that contend with stereotypes about the Romani people, will represent Poland at this year’s Venice Biennale. In a presentation curated by Wojciech Szymański and Joanna Warsza, the Polish-Romani artist will exhibit “a magical world, subjected to constant ‘re-enchanting,’ which will become a kind of refuge for the audience—an asylum offering hope and respite,” according to announcement for the pavilion.
Location: Giardini
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Portugal
Image Credit: Courtesy Direção-Geral das Artes Pedro Neves Marques, a video artist whose star is on the rise, was picked to represent Portugal. Neves Marques’s pavilion, organized by João Mourão and Luís Silva, will be called “Vampires in Space” and will feature new films and poems by the artist. Its focus will be vampires, which, in the artist’s interpretation, can be used to address our conceptions of gender and sexuality. As details about the 2022 Portuguese Pavilion were revealed, a controversy over the selection process for it also emerged. Curator Bruno Leitão alleged that his proposed artist, Grada Kilomba, should have been given the opportunity to represent Portugal, but that a flawed scoring system by its jury prevented that from happening. Kilomba would have become the first Black artist to represent Portugal, had Leitão’s plan come to fruition.
Location: Palazzo Franchetti San Marco 2847
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Romania
Image Credit: Photo George Chiper-Lillemark/Courtesy the artist In one of her biggest projects since winning the top award at the Berlin Film Festival for her boundary-pushing film Touch Me Not (2018), Adina Pintilie will do the Romanian Pavilion at this year’s Biennale. She will exhibit a new film project, You Are Another Me – A Cathedral of the Body, which will mull the state of bodies under attack by right-wing movements. Cosmin Costinas and Viktor Neumann, who are curating the pavilion, said in a statement, “Against the backdrop of a public sphere haunted by biopolitical control, religious and cultural conservatism, and a traditionally corrosive climate of shame, the Romanian Pavilion is conceived as a site to reflect upon the body as a device to process recognized and unrecognized history, trauma, and desires.”
Location; Giardini and New Gallery of the Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research (Palazzo Correr, Campo Santa Fosca, Cannareggio 2214 )
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Russia
Image Credit: Courtesy Russian Pavilion Kirill Savchenkov and Alexandra Sukhareva were supposed to represent Russia this year at the Venice Biennale, in a presentation that would respond to the Surrealism-heavy main show. Raimundas Malašauskas, who was curating this year’s Russian Pavilion, said that the presentation was to evoke “a transition from one state to another one, a twisted flow between future and past, a suspended division between dead and alive (and AI), day and night.” But amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Savchenkov, Sukhareva, and Malašauskas all pulled out of the pavilion, which was subsequently canceled. “There is no place for art when civilians are dying under the fire of missiles, when citizens of Ukraine are hiding in shelters, when Russian protesters are getting silenced,” the artists wrote in a statement.
Location: Giardini
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Sámi
Image Credit: Courtesy Office for Contemporary Art Norway The Nordic Pavilion, which represents Norway, Finland, and Sweden, will change its name for the 2022 edition to the Sámi Pavilion in honor of the three Indigenous artists who will take over the exhibition space. Those artists are Pauliina Feodoroff, Máret Ánne Sara, and Anders Sunna, who have focused on issues affecting the region’s Indigenous Sámi community in their work. “At this pivotal moment, it is vital to consider Indigenous ways of relating to the environment and to each other,” said Katya García-Antón, the director of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, which commissioned the pavilion.
Location: Giardini
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San Marino
Image Credit: Photo Felix Hörhager/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images There still hasn’t been an official announcement for San Marino’s pavilion, but the Venice Biennale’s website lists Elisa Cantarelli, Nicoletta Ceccoli, Roberto Paci Dalò, Endless, Michelangelo Galliani, Rosa Mundi, Anne-Cécile Surga, and Michele Tombolini as the country’s representatives. Vincenzo Rotondo is listed as the pavilion’s curator.
Location: Palazzo Donà Dalle Rose, Fondamenta Nove Cannaregio 5038
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Saudi Arabia
Image Credit: Courtesy Arab States Institute in Washington While little is known about Saudi Arabia’s pavilion this year, the Biennale website lists Muhannad Shono as the country’s representative. Within Saudi Arabia, where he is currently an artist in resident at the ancient city of AlUla, Shono has enjoyed a fast rise. He’s known for sculptures that reflect on his own origins as the child of Circassian parents from Syria. Reem Fadda will curate Shono’s pavilion, which is titled “The Teaching Tree.”
Location: Arsenale
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Scotland
Image Credit: Photo Matthew A Williams Alberta Whittle, whose videos and installations address anti-Blackness and colonialism, was picked to represent Scotland, with the art festival Glasgow International set to curate her exhibition. (Technically, Scotland does not have pavilion, which makes this exhibition a Biennale-sanctioned collateral event.) What, exactly, Whittle will produce isn’t yet known, though it appears to build on themes already present in her work. “With so many urgent conversations on health, grief, refusal, race and healing at the forefront of my mind, now is the moment to ask questions about how we can unlearn and be more actively reflective on a personal level as well as collectively,” she said in a statement.
Location: Docks Cantieri Cucchini, S. Pietro di Castello 40
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Serbia
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist Continuing an interest in humanity’s relationship with the natural world that can be seen in many other pavilions this year, Serbia’s representative, Vladimir Nikolic, will focus on water, in a pavilion that seeks to understand man’s “entanglement and interdependence” with aqueous bodies. A new film titled 800m relies on the “colonial” perspective of a drone to photograph various images of the artist’s body, while another work called A Document will take the form of a painting. Biljana Ciric will curate the pavilion, titled “Walking with Water.”
Location: Giardini
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Slovenia
Image Credit: Courtesy Kibla With the Venice Biennale’s main exhibition foregrounding Surrealism, Slovenia has taken the occasion to showcase works by Marko Jakše, whose paintings often envision worlds where human-like figures loom larger than life and natural settings know no bounds. The paintings he will exhibit in the pavilion, titled “Without a Master,” will deal with “what actually is the primordial in and outside us, and above all, how something is,” according to an announcement. Robert Simonišek will curate the pavilion.
Location: Arsenale
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Singapore
Image Credit: Courtesy National Arts Council Singapore For the past few years, artist Shubigi Rao has been at work on a project called “Pulp,” whose ongoing focus has been the destruction of books. Her Singaporean Pavilion will be the latest iteration of that series, entitled “Pulp III: A Short Biography of the Banished Book.” Billed as a “lyrical manuscript,” the work will explore the dissemination of knowledge across history. Ute Meta Bauer, who is curating the pavilion, has described Rao’s latest project as “an appreciation for what it means to persist, to productively and meaningfully live together.”
Location: Arsenale
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South Africa
Image Credit: Courtesy South African Pavilion South Africa’s pavilion is loosely themed around resilience and self-realization during the current pandemic, with works by three artists in multiple mediums illustrating those concepts. Roger Ballen will debut paintings made on glass that are etched in a way that recalls patterns created by female inmates on blacked-out prison windows, Lebohang Kganye will exhibit photographs in which she situates herself in scenes recalling fairy tales, and Phumulani Ntuli will show a stop-motion animation in which he appears in African dress before a series of waves. Amé Bell will organize the pavilion, which is titled “Into the Light.”
Location: Arsenale
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Spain
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist Ignasi Aballí will represent Spain at the 2022 Biennale, showing an architectural installation titled Corrección. The artist’s interdisciplinary practice spans painting, photography, film, and other mediums, and his work often explores notions of materiality and space. He told the newspaper El País that Corrección will be an environment unto itself built inside the Spanish pavilion, and that it “will create a new interior architecture with impossible, absurd and unimaginable spaces, through which at some points it will not be possible to go through and at others, the openings, the corridors and all the rooms will change; it will be seen in a way that has never been seen.” The presentation is curated by art historian Beatriz Espejo.
Location: Giardini
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Switzerland
Image Credit: Photo Sebastien Agnetti Latifa Echakhch, whose installations and sculptures deal with political strife and immigration, has been picked to do the Swiss Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale. For the pavilion, she will work with composer Alexandre Babel and curator Francesco Stocchi to create a project involving rhythm and sound. The Fully, Switzerland–based artist has won the Prix Marcel Duchamp, France’s top art award, and has appeared in a string of major biennials, including the Sharjah Biennial, the Biennale de Lyon, and others. Echakhch has promised that The Concert, the new installation she is presenting, will distort people’s perception of time and draw on ritual fires. “We want visitors to leave the exhibition with the same feeling they have when they come out of a concert,” she said in a statement. “That this rhythm, those fragments of memory, still echo.”
Location: Giardini
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Syria
Image Credit: Photo Felix Hörhager/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images There still hasn’t been an official announcement for the 2022 Syrian Pavilion, though the Venice Biennale’s website lists these artists as its participants: Saousan Alzubi, Ismaiel Nasra, Adnan Hamideh, Omran Younis, Aksam Tallaa, Giuseppe Amadio, Marcello Lo Giudice, Lorenzo Puglisi, Hannu Palosuo, Franco Mazzucchelli. Emad Kashout is named as the pavilion’s curator.
Location: Isola di San Servolo
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Taiwan
Image Credit: Photo Cudjuy Pahaulan As of February, the artist representing Taiwan was still unknown, although it wasn’t always that way. The Taiwanese exhibition—which is technically a collateral event, not a pavilion—became the subject of controversy at the end of 2021 when the artist expected to represent the country, Sakuliu Pavavaljung, began facing allegations that he had sexually assaulted multiple women. Sakuliu, a Paiwan artist born in southern Taiwan, denied the allegations. In 2022, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum said it had officially dropped Sakuliu as its representative at the Biennale, although it didn’t name the artist replacing him. Sakuliu is also expected to show at Documenta 15 in Kassel, Germany, yet the quinquennial said it was awaiting more information about the artist before making a final decision on whether he could participate.
Location: Palazzo delle Prigioni, Castello 4209
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Turkey
Image Credit: Courtesy Ege Art For its pavilion, Turkey has selected Füsun Onur to represent the country, and her contribution will be curated by Bige Örer, the director of the Istanbul Biennial and head of contemporary art projects at Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, which is commissioning Turkey’s pavilion this year. Onur is an influential Istanbul-based artist who has been working for over 50 years, and she is best known for her large-scale sculptural installations. During the 1960s, she lived for several years in the United States on a Fulbright scholarship, eventually earning a master’s degree in sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1967. In 2014, Istanbul’s Arter mounted a survey of her work that included early abstract drawings and a number of previously unrealized works. Onur’s work has been included in the 2007 Moscow Biennale, Documenta 13 in 2012, and five iterations of the Istanbul Biennial between 1987 and 2015.
Location: Arsenale
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Uganda
Image Credit: Courtesy Uganda National Pavilion Participating at the Venice Biennale for the first time ever, Uganda has lined up two Kampala-based artists as its inaugural representatives: Acaye Kerunen and Collin Sekajugo. The former deals with gender and labor in Africa in their work, while the latter paints stock imagery to question notions about race. Curated by Shaheen Merali, the show will be titled “Radiance – They Dream in Time.”
Location: Palazzo Palumbo Fossati, San Marco 2597
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Ukraine
Image Credit: Courtesy Ukrainian Pavilion For his Ukrainian Pavilion, artist Pavlo Makov will continue an ongoing project focused on climate change, with Borys Filonenko, Lizaveta Herman, and Maria Lanko set to curate. Titled Fountain of Exhaustion. Aqua Alta, Makov’s new work will be a 12-tier sculpture made of steel elements that guide the flow of water, making it so that there is a steady stream at the top and just a few drips by the time it reaches the bottom. The curators have promised that this work, focused on the exhaustion of natural resources, will implicitly deal with Ukraine’s current state. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, however, it is unclear whether the pavilion will actually take place. In February, the artist and the curators said they were “not able to continue working on the project of the pavilion due to the danger to our lives.” Shortly afterward, the Biennale promised that it would help the artist and the curators realize the pavilion, which is set to move forward as planned.
Location: Arsenale
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United Arab Emirates
Image Credit: Photo Augustine Paredes Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim will represent the United Arab Emirates at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Ibrahim, who has helped shape the U.A.E.’s contemporary art scene, focuses on the natural landscape in his abstract paintings and sculptures. In his practice, the artist utilizes materials including clay, branches, and rocks. Ibrahim’s work can be found in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Sharjah Art Foundation, and other international institutions. His pavilion, curated by Maya Allison, executive director and chief curator of the New York University Abu Dhabi Art Gallery, will feature new works.
Location: Arsenale
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United States
Image Credit: Shaniqwa Jarvis/©Simone Leigh Simone Leigh, one of the most celebrated sculptors working today, became the first Black woman to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale when her pavilion was announced in 2021. Leigh’s work focuses on Black women and resistance, and frequently draws on visual styles traditionally associated with craft, vernacular architecture, and West African art. The details of her pavilion remain somewhat vague, although it’s known it will be called “Sovereignty.” During the Biennale, Rashida Bumbray, the director of the Open Society Foundation, will lead a symposium focused on Black women throughout history. Leigh’s pavilion is being overseen by Jill Medvedow and Eva Respini, the director and chief curator, respectively, of the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, where works from the pavilion will appear in a 2023 survey.
Location: Giardini
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Uruguay
Image Credit: Via Pollock Krasner Foundation Gerardo Goldwasser, the artist representing Uruguay this year, has frequently turned tailoring as a practice that he considers to be something akin to drawing in three-dimensional space. Subjecting his fabrics to various mathematical systems, he cuts them up and exhibits the results. For the Venice Biennale, he will show new works that envision humans as being similar to machines in a presentation curated by Laura Malosetti Costa and Pablo Uribe.
Location: Giardini
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Uzbekistan
Image Credit: Courtesy Space Caviar For its ambitious 2022 pavilion, the Republic of Uzbekistan has selected Abror Zufarov and Charli Tapp, who will take their cues from Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a mathematician who came up with the concept of algorithms and who, according to some, was born in what is now the Uzbek city of Khiva. Organized by Studio Space Caviar and Sheida Ghomashchi, the pavilion will be titled “Dixit Algorizmi – The Garden of Knowledge” and will evolve over the course of its run. It will vaguely resemble a garden, with reflecting pools dividing it into quadrants and a sound installation that will be heard throughout. The Center for Contemporary Arts Tashkent has been enlisted to host workshops on an assortment of topics in tandem with the pavilion.
Location: Arsenale
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Venezuela
Image Credit: Photo Felix Hörhager/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images In 2019, the Venezuelan Pavilion just barely happened on time—representatives for the country were still installing its pavilion just days before the Biennale opened due to protests roiling Venezuela. Venezuela may still be in a dire financial state, but the country is moving forward with its 2022 pavilion, which will include works by Palmira Correa, César Vázquez, Mila Quast, and Jorge Recio under the name “Tierra, País, Casa, Cuerpo” (Land, Country, House, Body). Zacarías García will curate that show.
Location: Giardini
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Zimbabwe
Image Credit: Courtesy Zimbabwean Pavilion Among the many pavilions set to challenge the ways in which knowledge is communicated in the West—in history books, records, and more—is Zimbabwe’s, which will take the theme “I did not leave a sign.” Kresiah Mukwazhi, Wallen Mapondera, Terrence Musekiwa, and Ronald Muchatuta will show work at the pavilion organized by Fadzai Veronica Muchemwa.
Location: Santa Maria della Pietà, Calle della Pietà