{"id":446797,"date":"2026-05-17T22:47:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T22:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/446797\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T22:47:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T22:47:20","slug":"baby-dolls-whale-songs-and-swimming-in-urine-the-venice-biennales-must-see-national-pavilions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/446797\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby dolls, whale songs and swimming in urine: The Venice Biennale\u2019s must-see national pavilions"},"content":{"rendered":"

No Venice Biennale has ever been apolitical, but global affairs have deeply marked this year\u2019s edition already. A week into the 61st international art exhibition, there have been protests<\/a> against Russia and Israel’s participation, pavilions closing and threats to cut funding<\/a>. <\/p>\n

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The atmosphere is strikingly at odds with the late curator\u2019s vision for the event, encapsulated in the theme \u2018In Minor Keys\u2019<\/a>. Koyo Kouoh aimed to reorient the show away from the \u201canxious cacophony of the present chaos raging through the world\u201d to focus on softer tones of emotion, connectivity and grounding. <\/p>\n

Despite the high-profile demonstrations, the pavilions and exhibitions that chime with Kouoh\u2019s core values of nurture, intimacy and reflection are those that quietly steal this year\u2019s spotlight. They may be less splashy (with the exception of one that is literally so), but they\u2019re the ones likely to keep attracting visitors throughout the Biennale<\/a>, regardless of surrounding political stunts. <\/p>\n

A collective act of care at the Japan Pavilion<\/p>\n

As you approach the Japan Pavilion, shaded by trees in the Giardini, you see other visitors milling around, cradling baby dolls in their arms. There are smiles, laughter and jokes between strangers \u2013 not always the kinds of emotions associated with viewing contemporary art. <\/p>\n

Grass Babies, Moon Babies by Japanese American queer artist Ei Arakawa-Nash is one of the most subtly profound expressions of Kouoh\u2019s curatorial theme.<\/p>\n

Upon entering, visitors are invited to carry one of 57 dolls \u2013 in funky onesies and sunglasses \u2013 through the Pavilion\u2019s pilotis, gardens and interior spaces. In doing so, visitors participate in an act of collective care, with the option to change the dolls\u2019 diapers and activate a QR code that delivers a \u201cdiaper poem\u201d based on each baby\u2019s assigned birthday. <\/p>\n

Kouoh, who died in May 2025<\/a>, wanted this year\u2019s exhibition to focus on the slow and sensory. Arakawa-Nash\u2019s show invites visitors to physically and emotionally engage in an act that is deeply human and personal \u2013 not only does participation provoke joy, but also potentially nostalgia, responsibility or grief. <\/p>\n

In doing so, it forces us to confront fundamental social issues of raising children for an uncertain future. As the curators write, the pavilion asks, \u201chow can we celebrate a new generation of babies while we, as caregivers, undertake the unfinished work of reparations and amends that shape the world they enter?\u201d<\/p>\n

The sound of art at the Polish Pavilion and Holy See Pavilion<\/p>\n

Kouoh\u2019s melodic theme has inspired a wealth of sound-based shows in this year\u2019s pavilions<\/a>. They both literally and figuratively evoke minor keys, inviting visitors to engage with art using an alternative sense as well as to muse on the \u201clower frequencies\u201d of society: those marginalised or overlooked. <\/p>\n

In the Polish Pavilion\u2019s audio and video installation Liquid Tongues, Bogna Burska and Daniel Kotowski delve into disempowered ways of communication. <\/p>\n

The atmosphere is mesmerising: giant screens, one mounted on the ceiling so you can lie back on a large cushioned bench to watch, playing a performance by the Choir in Motion of both hearing and Deaf singers who chant and sign in International Sign Language. <\/p>\n

The space reverberates with sounds inspired by whale songs, an \u201cunheard voice\u201d like that of the Deaf community. The project highlights efforts to reclaim languages pushed aside by dominant voices, including Hand Talk, the Plains Indian Sign Language used by both hearing and Deaf Indigenous people in North America. <\/p>\n

As the curators write, \u201cBased on the idea of Deaf Gain, deafness isn\u2019t seen as a disability. Most of the footage was shot in water. Deaf people can sign freely there, but hearing people can only make muffled sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Holy See Pavilion\u2019s The Ear is the Eye of the Soul complements Kouoh\u2019s \u201carchipelago of oases\u201d in the main exhibition, envisioned as spaces rich with memory and emotion that were central to major artists\u2019 universes. <\/p>\n

In the case of the Giardino Mistico, a convent garden of the Discalced Carmelite order, visitors are invited to attune to a quieter register. After donning open-ear headphones, you meander around the garden in silence, encountering a series of sound commissions by experimental musicians inspired by 12th-century Saint Hildegard of Bingen\u2019s chants and visions. <\/p>\n

In a cacophonous world that races towards novelty and innovation, this retrospective, introspective act of walking and listening feels nothing short of radical. <\/p>\n

A sewage seaworld at the Austrian Pavilion<\/p>\n

If playing in a minor key describes anything to a tee right now, it\u2019s the city of Venice itself. Its melancholic plight is explored in what is fast becoming the buzziest pavilion of the Biennale this year, Austria<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Titled Seaworld Venice, it\u2019s somewhere between an underwater theme park and a sewage treatment plant \u2013 a blunt vision of the city\u2019s future in grim climate change scenarios. <\/p>\n

Austrian choreographer and performance artist Florentina Holzinger\u2019s permanent live installation features a naked jet skier zooming in circles, in a nod to Venice’s issues with excess boat traffic, and another nude performer in a water tank that is topped up with visitors\u2019 filtered urine from adjacent portable toilets. <\/p>\n

The project makes visitors palpably conscious of their individual impact on Venice and the world’s ecological fragility. <\/p>\n

As curator Nora-Swantje Almes explains, \u201cHolzinger depicts humankind\u2019s complicity in collapsing systems, questioning established structures and the apparent order of things \u2013 and revealing that order itself is inherently unstable.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No Venice Biennale has ever been apolitical, but global affairs have deeply marked this year\u2019s edition already. A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[8247,9113,146,7506,85,46,1437,11652,45876],"class_list":["post-446797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-austria","tag-contemporary-art","tag-entertainment","tag-exhibition","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-japan","tag-venice","tag-venice-biennale"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}