A Curated Companion to the 61st Venice Biennale

Now underway and running until November 22, the 61st Venice Biennale has already emerged as one of the most politically charged editions in recent memory. The lead-up to this year’s launch was beset by drama when the jury resigned – after refusing to award a Golden Lion to artists from countries whose leaders are facing charges of crimes against humanity – and tragedy struck, when Swiss-Cameroonian curator Koyo Kouoh, appointed to lead the main exhibition, died suddenly before its completion. There were pro-Palestinian protests and a pink balaclava-clad demonstration led by Pussy Riot and FEMEN activists in front of the Russian pavilion, opposing their inclusion while the full-scale invasion of Ukraine continues.

Amid this heightened political atmosphere, many artists engaged with such issues in their work – but not at the expense of aesthetic beauty, absurdist humor or splashy showmanship. After a thorough combing of all the pavilions at the Giardini and Arsenale, here is a compiled list of the most notable spaces to engage with.

The most talked about pavillion: Austria with Seaworld Venice by Florentina Holzinger

Beneath a giant, rotating weathervane of an acrobatically contorted female body, Florentina Holzinger showcased extreme physicality and heightened theatricality via a berserk waterpark populated with nude women. A church bell over the pavilion was activated by the swaying motion of an upside-down Holzinger replacing the clapper, chiming with each back-and-forth sweep of her body. Nearby, a naked performer on a jet ski circled a contained body of water–a nod to the turbo-tourism affecting the sinking city hosting the Biennale.

Beyond these interventions, an on-site sewage treatment system recycled urine —which visitors “contribute” to in two meticulously cleaned port-o-potties—thus transforming, in real time, audience bodily fluids into performance material. “Your pee keeps the art alive,” confirmed a bathroom attendant, instructing bathroom-goers as they entered: “No solids, no toilet paper.” As the accompanying artist statement noted, “The ‘beauty’ sought in Venice is inseparable from the filth left behind.”

The most infantilizing artwork: Grass Babies, Moon Babies by Ei Arakawa-Nash

“Can I assign you a baby?” asked a woman working at the Japan pavilion. Despite how this sounds, she was not, in fact, deranged, but rather one of the hostesses aiding Japanese-American performance artist Ei Arakawa-Nash. The artist invited visitors to hold one of 57 custom onesie-clad dolls. There are 208 babies “crawling” around in total: climbing scaffolding inside the pavilion and clinging onto greenery outside, an installation completed with baby bottles and clusters of carriages. The interactive nature of this performance was inspired by the artist’s own journey of becoming a queer parent to twins in 2024. Each doll weighs precisely six kilograms to match the actual heft of a four-month-old baby.

Visitors who feel particularly nurturing can even change the doll’s diapers and activate a QR code that delivers a “diaper poem.” Following Venice, the exhibition will travel to Germany and Japan in the next two years.

The best typology: Los restos by Oriol Vilanova

What do portraits of royalty, historical statues, dolls, mosaics, camels and matadors have in common? They have all been scrupulously assembled by Spanish artist Oriol Vilanova, who has been collecting 19th and 20th century postcards from flea markets in Brussels, where he lives, and beyond, for decades. “I consider the flea market my studio,” Vilanova said. Part color theory, part indexical inventory, the showcase highlights fascinating patterns of repetition and striking poetic connections. His assemblages reflect the way images broadly circulate within the field of photography, in an arrangement akin to an algorithm. The haphazard wonder it generates is comparable to that of the Picture Collection at the New York Public Library.

The most delicate artwork: Geographies of Distance: Remembering Home by Sumakshi Singh

The India Pavilion returns to Venice after being absent since 2019. Among the five artists presented, the exquisite fragility of artist Sumakshi Singh’s life-sized reconstruction of her childhood home – made entirely from embroidered thread – stands out as a gorgeous homage to a demolished place in staircases and pillars. Across the pavilion, Ranjani Shettar’s suspended sculptural flowers crafted by hand form what is described as “a conceptual garden.” As her gallery puts it: “her engagement exposes the permeability of the often-distinct thresholds between craft and art, tradition and modernity, the physical and the spiritual, while transforming the simple and mundane into the magical.” These two projects flank Asim Waqif’s large-scale bamboo installation in a Jenga-like assemblage, intended to, as he writes in an artist statement, “crossover between architecture, art and design, with a strong contextual reference to contemporary urban design and the politics of occupying/intervening/using public space.”

The most spiritual pavillion: The Ear is the Eye of the Soul by Holy See

Head to Giardino Mistico dei Carmelitani Scalzi – a startling enclave behind the train station. It’s a soothing, contemplative outing in an airy garden situated within a 17th-century convent, filled with parcels of lavender, fennel, rosemary and flowering zucchini. The journey along a pebbled path is soundtracked by the dazzlingly ambitious yet calm assortment of music overseen by Soundwalk Collective: There are new commissions – ethereal, breathy – by 22 contemporary musicians, composers, poets and artists, including Brian Eno, FKA Twigs and Patti Smith, all inspired by the legacy of abbess Saint Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). Accessed through an odd-looking headset, the sonic experience activates and shifts automatically as you move along different zones of the garden. It feels like a sacred experience and a sheer delight just to engage in the quiet act of listening in a stunning organic setting.

The best gay playground: Grecia by Andreas Angeledakis

The Greek pavilion, taken over by Andreas Angeledakis, takes the form of an Escape Room underpinned by Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. This multimedia installation, toys with the gamification of reality mixed in with tacky urban tourism mementos, gay cultural typologies and architectural history, all reinvented through a queer lens to disrupt static narratives. Outside, there are wilting replicas of the pavilion’s original columns along the stairs. Inside, there are soft sculptures to sit on, a red-lit floor, refrigerators filled with male silhouettes and a video about philosophy that looks delightfully Web 1.0.