Standout Artist Pavilions Steal Show at Venice Biennale

Florentina Holzinger raised the stakes at the Venice Biennale with her Austrian pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale. The show opened with the Austrian artist suspended upside down from the clappers of a large bell. Inside, a woman rode a speedboat in circles, two others hung from the top of a pole, and another sat fully submerged in a tank. All performers appeared nude. Visitors could use two toilets so their urine would be purified and pumped into the tank. A sewage-like mess in another section hinted at potential disaster. Four police officers arrived during one viewing to question the scene. The installation quickly became the talk of Venice.

Sanya Kantarovsky filled the Palazzo Loredan with eerie paintings and sculptures. The 44-year-old artist, born in Moscow, moved to the United States with his family at age 10. His works resemble intense film stills, such as a naked man crouching in despair beside a bed while a dog sits on the pillow. The paintings hang in book-lined rooms under Murano glass chandeliers. The exhibition ends with a detailed Murano glass sculpture of a boy's head. The setup evokes a strange seance across centuries.

South African artist Gabrielle Goliath faced pre-Biennale controversy when her government banned her Elegy as a highly divisive tribute to a Palestinian poet. She presented it anyway with London arts centre Ibraaz at the Chiesa di Sant’Antonin, near the Giardini and Arsenale. Opera-trained women on screens hold a single high note, then step down from a platform as replacements take over. Conceived in 2015, the ritual mourns women killed in acts of sexualized or racialized violence.

Carrie Schneider contributed 1.5 km-long photographic curls to the In Minor Keys show at the Arsenale. The curls repeat a still from Chris Marker's 1962 film La Jetée. Other highlights include Akinbode Akinbiyi's suspended street scenes from Francophone Africa, Guadalupe Rosales's Chicano archive, and Avi Mograbi's directory of lost Gaza businesses and lives.

British-Algerian Lydia Ourahmane crafted 5 Works at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation using Venice materials set for local reuse. A new wooden pier goes to a cooperative. Inmates from Giudecca women's prison threaded a Murano glass bead curtain. A church device once used to light a Bellini painting now activates the lights via euro coin slot.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan's installation in the Canicula exhibition at Complesso dell’Ospedaletto probes sonic weapons. As a private ear, he collects testimony from Serbia demonstrators dispersed from a silent anti-government protest. The film 450XL: the Story of a Fugitive Sound plays on 15 screens like protest placards in a frescoed music room.

Zhanna Kadyrova's giant concrete origami deer dangles from a crane outside the Giardini entrance. Made in 2018 for a park in Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, it reached Venice in 2024 after four evacuation attempts. Ukrainian pavilion footage in the Arsenale shows its road journey across Europe, pauses in cities, and greetings from Pokrovsk refugees under Russian control.

Zhang Zhoujie caps the Chinese pavilion in the Arsenale with digital chairs amid 10 proposals blending human and artificial intelligence. Other works feature Jiang Suxuan's model landscapes, Nie Shichang's calligraphy robot, and Game Science's video game from Chinese myth.