National Pavilions We Loved at the Venice Biennale

You’ve been following our detailed coverage of the pivotal 2026 Venice Biennale, which runs until November 22. I trust you’ve read our reviews on Koyo Kouoh’s posthumous main exhibition In Minor Keys, the forgettable United States pavilion by Alma Allen, and Gabrielle Goliath’s Elegy, which was showcased in a church after being removed from the South African pavilion. We hope you’ve also engaged with our insights on Dayanita Singh’s project at the State Archives of Venice, the mixed collaboration between Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince, and our interview with Khaled Sabsabi, whose work in the Australian pavilion faced censorship from pro-Israel groups but was eventually reinstated. Our coverage extends to many more events in this international exhibition and its collateral showcases.

However, we haven’t yet shared our true opinions on the national pavilions and which are worth your time. Now that the intense summer heat is easing, it might be the ideal moment to visit the biennale if you haven’t already. Below is the first segment of a discussion between Editor-at-Large Hrag Vartanian and critic Aruna D’Souza, where they express their preferences, dislikes, and uncertainties about the pavilions. They start with a compelling argument supporting national pavilions. Did they become advocates for nation-states? Not quite—let’s hear them out.

—Hakim Bishara, editor-in-chief

---

Prologue: In Defense of National Pavilions

Hrag Vartanian: It’s quite common to criticize the national pavilion concept, and previous biennials, like the São Paulo Biennial, have even eliminated the idea. However, I believe the significance of Venice lies in the contrast between the main exhibition and the national pavilions. While there are valid criticisms, we must acknowledge that our national identities and passports influence everything from funding to media visibility.

Eliminating them might appease academics and curators who prefer to stay above the fray, but it would only hide their privilege without addressing the reality that national borders continue to dictate much. Just look at the Venice Biennale’s overrepresentation of Nordic countries, monarchies funded by fossil fuels, autocratic states, and affluent nations that direct money to the arts through government or private channels.

National pavilions also provide smaller nations a platform to highlight their own artistic narratives. Removing them could result in countries like Timor-Leste, Cape Verde, and Nauru being overshadowed in the larger exhibition, as seen in other biennials. The idea of doing away with national pavilions often arises in privileged circles, typically among those with the most robust passports, which speaks volumes. This year’s boycotts emphasized these pressure points. While some interventions were uneven—I question why ANGA didn’t address Turkey’s involvement in aiding Israel’s actions in Gaza while highlighting other countries with pavilions in the Arsenale and Giardini—they were still meaningful.

Aruna D’Souza: I generally concur, especially considering how many countries are participating for the first time. Thirteen pavilions from African countries! Panama had a presence even as Trump threatened their sovereignty! There are numerous other examples.

The main issue with how national pavilions are presented, in my view, is the hierarchy in their introductions. Often, the commissioner or sponsor is listed first, followed by the curator, and lastly, the artist. This is the Biennale’s preferred listing order, as seen in their catalog of national participants. I strongly dislike reducing the artist to a mere bureaucrat serving a country.

---

Ecuador

Combining the Indigenous-led Tawna collective and artist Óscar Santillán, the Ecuadorian pavilion was a sanctuary of storytelling and contemplation. Tawna’s 26-minute video “Llaki” (2025) poignantly depicted how Indigenous people of non-heteronormative sexualities endure colonial structures and how these norms affect families and relationships. Instead of dwelling on loss, it celebrates the resilience of these identities. Santillán’s “Medula” (2026) was a fascinating piece featuring “Alien DNA” and a circuit board, reflecting the same resilience and bold engagement with the world’s challenges. —HV

Democratic Republic of Congo

Nine artists from the Democratic Republic of Congo and its diaspora made an impressive debut at the biennale with “Simba Moto! Seize the Fire! Saisis le Feu!” The centerpiece, designed by Johnny Leye of the architectural firm Traumnovelle, was an oval structure inviting reflection. Within it, Aimé Mpané’s “Le Souffle” (2026) depicted three figures made of matchsticks reclining on an air mattress, suggesting either peaceful sleep or a precarious search for safety. Arlette Bashizi’s photographs captured mining’s environmental devastation, while Patrick Bongo’s recycled rubber sculptures highlighted industrial human and environmental costs. Sammy Baloji’s tapestry, “Seeing Katharina” (2026), explored colonial histories. The exhibition was ambitious and powerful. —AD

Taiwan

Li Yi-Fan’s digital masterpiece humorously critiques our increasingly digital existence and its awkward adjustments. His digital marionette mirrors our unease with the world and its strange, emotional nuances. Amid a biennale filled with spectacles, “Screen Melancholy” captivated me, immersing me in a fragmented world that reflects our reality. —HV

Bahamas

Krista Thompson curated In Another Man’s Yard, showcasing John Beadle and Lavar Monroe. Beadle, initially set to represent the Bahamas in 2015 but delayed due to funding issues, passed away in 2024. This exhibition serves as both a tribute and a correction, with Monroe engaging in a “posthumous collaboration” as per the exhibition guide. Both artists utilized discarded materials such as cardboard, newspapers, and sails from Haitian boats. This follows the Junkanoo tradition, where people repurpose materials into costumes. Beadle’s sculpture of a boat’s rudder, crafted from cardboard and supported by an iron spike, beautifully evokes both the horrific transatlantic slave trade and hopeful migration. —AD

Canada

The presence of West Asian diasporic artists was a highlight of this Venice Biennale, notably Abbas Akhavan’s Entre Chien et Loup (2026). He transformed the Canadian pavilion’s unique spiral interior into a greenhouse with aquatic plants from Kew Gardens, which is closed for renovation. As the biennale progresses, these plants will grow from small sizes to meter-long lily pads.

Akhavan explores British Empire history in this project. The giant water lily here, also known as the “Queen of Aquatics,” was named after Queen Victoria, who ruled when Canada became a Dominion in 1867. Akhavan’s work resonates because he invests in the aesthetic worlds his ideas and language create. He introduces a sense of time in this and much of his other work; the plant sizes will indicate when photos circulating on social media were taken—a beautiful feature when many art images emphasize timelessness. I’m saddened I may not see them evolve, but the idea is significant since gardens, a central theme in his work, have lives that surpass our own. Persian Gardens are an emerging theme in contemporary art for various reasons—this perfectly captures that zeitgeist. —HV

Serbia and Spain

Both Predrag Djaković’s “Through Golgotha to Resurrection” in Serbia’s pavilion and Oriol Vilanova’s “Los Restos” in Spain’s pavilion engage with archives in intriguing ways. Djaković examines how history is shaped by what is preserved—photos, newspapers, maps, deeds, stock certificates, and more form our historical perspective. These archival documents, arranged on the building walls, immerse us in a specific 20th-century history from a Serbian viewpoint. It is mesmerizing.

Vilanova embraces the randomness of archives with his installation of tens of thousands of postcards collected from flea markets over two decades. He arranges them from floor to ceiling, not emphasizing relationships between them but creating color gradients—stripes of red, white, black, jade green, and more—disrupting the visual chaos of the world arranged within a pavilion. —AD

Timor-Leste

The Timor-Leste pavilion is the type of small nation showcase I eagerly anticipate at the Venice Biennale. The three artists involved blend national identities with new ideas, notably Verónica Pereira Maia’s contribution to traditional Timorese tais weaving, exhibited in Europe for the first time with “Tais Don” (1994–99).

Maia, who fled Timor-Leste in 1975 during the Indonesian occupation, transformed the names of 271 victims of the Dili’s Santa Cruz cemetery massacre on November 12, 1991, into a textile memorial, despite being unable to read or write. She also participated in protests following the atrocity, and “activated” the textile through performance at the cemetery, using it as a communal shroud.

Sound artist Etson Caminha, from the Arte Moris Free Art School established post-independence in 2002, created an audioscape for the exhibition, illustrating how art and national identity can forge new paths. Self-taught video artist Juventino Madeira demonstrates in “Fraze ne’ebé seidauk hotu (An Unfinished Sentence)” (2025–26) how YouTube and local histories can fuel vibrant youth culture. —HV

Czech Republic and Slovak Republic

I admire that despite the 1992 division into two separate countries, the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic continue to share a pavilion under the old name, with both countries sponsoring the exhibits. This year’s contribution, The Silence of the Mole by Jakub Jansa and the artistic duo Selmeci Kocka Jusko, resulted from a year-long collaboration—Jansa made the film, Selmeci Kocka Jusko created the sculptural installation. It focuses on Mr. M, a performer who embodied a fictional mole (like Krteček, the animated character from Czech TV) to such an extent that he became the mole, with the prosthetic mask fusing to his face. It’s both creepy and charming, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. —AD

HV: I also appreciate this coexistence, acknowledging that these two culturally distinct countries share much in common historically and currently. This video project captivated me, delving into my psyche. However, the objects behind the screen seemed odd and did little to enhance or converse with the stronger video component.

Ukraine

This year featured two exhibitions devoted to Ukraine. One collateral project in Dorsoduro, sponsored by the Pinchuk Art Center and titled “Still Joy,” brought together an international group of artists, including Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk, Tacita Dean, and Zhanna Kadyrova, to explore joy amidst horror. The theme was poignant, and the work was strong, but the curators’ choice to include quotes from fascist-adjacent historian Niall Ferguson was troubling and marred the otherwise solid show.

Fortunately, Ukraine’s official pavilion was excellent. Displayed at the Giardini entrance was a concrete sculpture of an origami deer on a flatbed truck, created by Zhanna Kadyrova in 2019 for a public park in Pokrovsk. In August 2024, as the war neared the city, Kadyrova and the NGO “Museum Open for Renovations,” led by Leonid Marushchak, relocated it, and the following year, they drove it to Venice. Videos of the 3,000-kilometer journey are exhibited in the Arsenale. Kadyrova named the piece “Security Guarantees,” a double entendre referencing both the object’s safety and Ukraine’s 1994 entry into the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons with the US, UK, and Russia, assuring the country protection from aggression by treaty members. —AD

Australia

The Australian pavilion offered a perfectly executed project for its black box space, reflecting its multicultural, if imperfect, coexistence. Khaled Sabsabi’s “conference of one’s self” (2026) immerses visitors in a world of shifting colors and shapes, accompanied by largely incomprehensible sounds. There’s a profound sense of seeking something, an elusive center, leaving a lingering feeling of beauty and longing for what was almost within reach. —HV

Montenegro

Siniša Radulović’s multimedia installation, Out of the Blue, I’m Swept Away (2026), was a striking creation: a glass-covered floor revealing identical, sterile white cells with figurines inside. Some figures recline like odalisques, others sit in suits as if in meetings, and still others—tellingly, the black figures—appear packed as if in detention. It offered a compelling commentary on how the spaces we inhabit—schools, offices, spas, prisons—are interchangeable in our dystopian, apocalyptic, capitalist context. Large-scale video projections on surrounding walls created a futuristic atmosphere, evoking a Severance-like vibe in the best way. —AD

Egypt

Armen Agop’s large granite sculptures in the Egyptian pavilion engage with monumental forms throughout history without succumbing to nostalgia. He invites visitors to touch a gently rocking table piece, providing a tactile experience that captures a timeless quality he seeks. While I wish his work addressed Egypt’s ongoing turmoil, the country’s repeated avoidance of such themes is more a structural issue than one attributable to an individual artist. —HV

Nordic Countries: Finland, Norway, Sweden

This collaborative pavilion showcased Klara Kristalova (Czech, based in Sweden), Tori Wrånes (Norwegian), and Benjamin Orlow (Finnish, based in London), offering a blend of whimsical and Hitchcockian elements. Kristalova’s sculpture, featuring a log with a woman’s head and caterpillar-like feet, adorned with mythical figures, leaned into fairy tales’ horror. Wrånes’s headless figures, crafted from old sails, conveyed a painful transformation into monstrosity. Orlow’s sculpture of a human head with protruding sticks, set on a tripod, resonated with the digital world of 2026. —AD

Chile

While the accompanying artspeak may not have helped Norton Maza, I appreciated the interplay of scales and surfaces in “Inter-reality,” despite its sleek and almost clinical quality, which usually doesn’t appeal to me. Visitors ascend a staircase to find books hidden on the roof or peer through holes in an angular iceberg form to see scenes within. The hyper-realistic sculpture of a man pressed against the large white form raises awareness and leaves unanswered questions, which I didn’t feel needed resolution. —HV

---

Honorable mentions

South Africa: I regard Gabrielle Goliath’s Elegy, showcased at the Chiesa di Sant’Antonin‍ in Castello‍, as South Africa’s pavilion, despite the culture minister’s objections. The piece, where women and genderqueer singers sustain a single note, passing it along as needed, is a beautiful and emotional expression of collective mourning. The acoustics of the church amplified the sound, transforming it into a call for action. —AD

Poland: Our contributor Avedis Hadjian discovered the Polish pavilion’s efforts to protect a seagull’s nest in the Giardini by building a fence around it, which endeared them to me. Bogna Burska and Daniel Kotowski’s “Liquid Tongues” installation inside was worth exploring, offering seating and resting spots for contemplation on communication, but the pavilion’s care for its avian neighbor truly stood out. They deserve an award for that alone. —HV

Republic of Zimbabwe and Ethiopia: This year saw a strong showing of African countries. Zimbabwe and Ethiopia’s exhibitions were particularly striking. Zimbabwe’s “Second Nature” group show, featuring artists Eva Raath, Felix Shumba, Franklin Dzingal, Gideon Gomo, and Pardon Mapondera, explored machine logic, technical mediation, and control systems’ impact on human consciousness. Meanwhile, Ethiopia’s Tengene Kunbi presented large-scale paintings incorporating textiles, blending industrial fast fashion remnants with handmade elements from the artist’s mother, showcasing complexity and vibrant color. —AD