As the first African woman appointed to direct the exhibition, Kouoh brought a vision rooted in plurality and a rebalancing of the global art narrative: ‘Venice has given me carte blanche, and I am going to play my carte noire.’
ART FIX’S TOP 10 NATIONAL PAVILIONS
ZHANNA KADYROVA | UKRAINE
Entering the Giardini, visitors are greeted by a monumental concrete deer by Zhanna Kadyrova suspended from a crane on a flatbed truck. Originally created for a park in Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine, the sculpture was evacuated in 2024 after multiple attempts and transported across Europe to Venice.
Photo: Valentyna Rostovikova
The work becomes far more than a sculpture—it carries the weight of displacement, survival, and memory. Inside the Ukrainian Pavilion in the Arsenale, moving footage of the deer’s journey and its encounters with refugees from Pokrovsk turns the installation into a powerful symbol of resilience and loss.
ORIOL VILANOVA | SPAIN
The Spanish pavilion turns something as simple as an old postcard into a surprisingly moving reflection on remembrance, nostalgia, and the traces people leave behind. These overlooked fragments of personal history quietly reveal how stories, emotions, and histories survive through everyday objects.
MIET WARLOP | BELGIUM
When you walk into the Belgian Pavilion, the space feels transformed into a hybrid of locker room, stadium, and construction site. Performers move endlessly through waves of music, plaster, sweat, and destruction, while fragments of language, rhythmic chants, and smashed sculptures turn the pavilion into a nonstop choreography of repetition and endurance.
QATAR
At the future location of the permanent Qatar Pavilion in the Giardini, you’ll now find a maroon structure designed by Rirkrit Tiravanija. A vibrant communal meeting space inspired by Qatari hospitality and gathering traditions. The exhibition brings together art, music, and food, with performances by Tarek Atoui and works by Sophia Al-Maria and Alia Farid exploring identity, migration, and survival.
TORI WRÅNES, KLARA KRISTALOVA, AND BENJAMIN ORLOW | THE NORDIC PAVILION (NORWAY, SWEDEN & FINLAND)
The Nordic Pavilion transforms Sverre Fehn’s iconic building into a poetic landscape where mythology, nature, and architecture merge seamlessly. Existing trees growing through the pavilion become part of the exhibition itself, alongside sculptures and installations inspired by Nordic myths, transformation, and imaginary hybrid creatures. The pavilion feels mysterious, organic, and almost enchanted.
EI ARAKAWA-NASH | JAPAN
In Grass Babies, Moon Babies, visitors carry the dolls through the pavilion, change their diapers, and receive a poem linked to the baby’s “birthday.” The pavilion is funny, absurd, and unexpectedly touching. What struck us most was how everyone instinctively treated the dolls like real babies—carefully cradling them like precious cargo, never casually swinging one by an arm or leg.
FLORENTINA HOLZINGER | AUSTRIA
The Austrian Pavilion is definitively the talk of the town. The performances artist Florentina Holzinger turns the pavilion into a chaotic ecosystem of flooding water, industrial machinery, and naked performers. SEAWORLD VENICE is provocative, absurd, and strangely hypnotic: a jet ski races through the flooded pavilion, performers hang from a giant spinning weathervane, and outside, a suspended body tolls a massive bell every hour.
Beneath the spectacle lies a razor-sharp reflection on Venice itself—its fragile infrastructure, ecological collapse, and the consequences of mass tourism.
