The 2026 Venice Biennale almost collapsed before it opened its doors. Plagued by cancelled exhibitions, political protests, artist strikes, and the tragic loss of its original curator, Koyo Kouoh, the event arrived already fractured. Kouoh’s initial vision, titled In Minor Keys, was intended to be an oasis of “spiritual and physical rest.”
Yet, against the backdrop of escalating global conflicts, the rise of the far right, and a creeping ecological disaster, a mandate to simply relax and recharge felt profoundly out of step with reality.
Following Kouoh’s passing, a five-person curatorial committee stepped in. The resultant central exhibitions in the Giardini and Arsenale reflect a muddled, risk-averse compromise. Stepping into the Giardini feels less like confronting the vanguard of contemporary art and more like wandering through a tame, highly sanitised art fair.
Endless, gentle displays of ceramics, textiles, and abstracted landscapes dominate the space, almost entirely ignoring the existential dread brewing outside the exhibition halls.
While there are isolated moments of brilliance—such as Seyni Awa Camara’s towering terracotta hybrids and Mohammed Z Rahman’s poignant matchbox paintings—the main show is an over-hung, incomprehensible mess that completely misses the contemporary zeitgeist.
Thankfully, the national pavilions shatter this polite tedium. It is here that the Biennale rediscovers its bite, diving headfirst into the ludicrous, the grotesque, and the genuinely provocative. Contemporary art is rarely described as fun, but this year’s pavilions lean heavily into absurdity.
Denmark has transformed its space into a hi-tech sperm bank, Japan forces visitors to care for synthetic babies, and Belgium offers a hyper-serious, drumming spectacle akin to an art school Blue Man Group.
In the Greek pavilion, Andreas Angelidakis has reimagined Plato’s Cave as a deflated, phallic kink dungeon—a pointed critique of how national heritage is commodified.
However, the undisputed talking point of the festival is Florentina Holzinger’s Austrian pavilion. Confrontational and unashamedly vile, it features nude performers, a jetski, and a woman submerged in a tank of filtered urine—supplied, naturally, by visitors using the adjacent portaloos.
Nearby, raw effluent sprays violently against a locked window. It is a brilliant, stomach-turning diatribe on climate catastrophe and the extreme fragility of the hidden systems keeping our society afloat. We are, the exhibit suggests, mere inches away from drowning in our own filth.
Where the central exhibition retreats into neutrality, the unofficial, off-site shows scattered around Venice supply the essential political rigour. The Belarus Free Theatre exposes totalitarian terror with a wheat field and CCTV crucifixes, whilst Gabrielle Goliath’s breathtaking sonic lament for victims of colonial and sexual violence resonates fiercely inside a local church.
At the Fondazione Prada, Richard Prince and Arthur Jafa present a searing exploration of America’s cultural malaise, tackling racial hatred and exploitation with punk thievery.
Even amidst the noise, genuine moments of peace can be found. The Vatican’s off-site garden pavilion offers a masterclass in Kouoh’s original brief, using immersive soundscapes by Brian Eno and Devonte Hynes to induce true meditative calm amidst thunderstorms and swaying vines.
Ultimately, the 2026 Venice Biennale is an overwhelming, disjointed beast. The main curation might have failed to capture the moment, but if you venture into the city’s ancient palazzos and winding alleys, you will still find artists daring enough to hold up a mirror to our crumbling, chaotic world.