Biennale Day Two at the Arsenale- more Art in Venice

Sunday October 4 was another beautiful day with a high of 23C.  We have been very fortunate to have great summer-like weather.  Our destination for the day was the Arsenale, the second main site of the Biennale. Historically, the Arsenale was the largest production centre in Venice during the pre-industrial era and it employed up to 2000 workers a day. It was a huge complex of construction sites where the Serenissima fleets were built.  

The main exhibition building of the Arsenale is the Corderie, originally built in 1303 and then rebuilt between 1579 and 1585. The Corderie was once used to make mooring ropes, cables and ropes used on ships.  Since 1980, the Arsenale became an exhibition site of the Biennale.  In addition to the main venue of the Corderie, the Arsenale hosts about 25 National pavilions.  

Heading towards the Arsenale

En route we stopped briefly at the National Pavilion of Montenegro, which was an offsite Collateral venue.

Seeing a sign for the Montenegro pavilion on the side of a building.

Poster for the exhibit

It is a multimedia installation by artist Siniša Radulovic and is Montenegro's official national participation in the Biennale.  The exhibit was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Montenegro.

Blue boxes using the artist's own floor plan of his house that create a complex and suffocating structure. "Almost a dystopian vision in which architecture no longer represents a living space but a system of organizion and control".

These are only a few boxes of an entire small room filled with them. 

We continued our walk towards the entrance to the Arsenale exhibition space.

Buildings that were part of the older complex of shipyards and armories

Additional buildings 

We crossed the bridge to the other site.

Another offsite Collateral exhibit- Fermata: Hong Kong in Venice.

The Hong Kong exhibit featured two artists, Kingsley Ng and Angel Hui.  "Fermata represents a pause that exists in two realms. In a musical score, it marks a moment of suspension, where a note or rest is prolonged at the performer's discretion.  In the Venetian cityscape, a fermata is a vaporetto stop- a threshold where passengers momentarily alight and embark".  

Angel Hui (b. 1990, Hong Kong), I would like to Open a Window for You, 2026-- the window is a motif connecting Hong Kong and Venice

Kingsley Ng, (b 1980, Hong Kong), Sometimes, There are Clouds in Puddles, 2026. The installation "traces a quiet exchange between the artist's impressions of Venice and the urban rhythms of Hong Kong. It finds wonder in a reflective drizzle."

One can see the lines of drizzle and the pools of water

The last off-site exhibit we saw was the Pavilion of the Republic of San Marino.  The exhibit was entitled: Sea of Sound and featured the work of Mark Francis (b. 1962) , a Northern Irish painter who lives and works in London.

Entry to the pavilion

Phase Break, 2025

Oscillator II, 2025

Listening Field-- film

We walked to the entrance of the Arsenale site, which had a series of posters saying "Welcome queers and trans people, Welcome to Venice."

We then entered the Corderie which has ten interconnected rooms featuring the work of many artists.

The poster in front of a curtain that led to the first exhibit room contained a poem
by the late Palestinian poet Refaat al-Areer entitled: If I must Die.
 

The poem acts as a reference to both the time of war we are living through and the choice to continue the exhibition after Koyo Kouoh's passing.  Kouoh, the acclaimed Swiss-Cameroonian curator, passed away at age 57 on May 10, 2025, following a brief bout with cancer.  Her passing was unexpected, just days before she was scheduled to formally debut the Biennale's title and theme on May 20, 2025.  Luckily, all the artists had been chosen and her team was able to carry on.

There was also a poster setting forth the vision of In Minor Keys.  "The Biennale Arte 2026 is grounded in a deep belief in artists as the vital interpreters of the social and psychic condition and catalysts of new relations and possibilities. ... The premise is that poetry liberates and that people make beauty together".

The first gallery of the exhibit featured the work of Khaled Sabsabi.

Khaled Sabsabi, (b. 1968, Tripoli, Lebanon Lives in Sydney, Australia), Khalil, 2026. Sabsabi's journey from Lebanon to Australia in November 1976 was shaped by war, displacement and loss.  This multimedia piece is titled Khalil, an Arabic word for close friend or companion.

Daniel Lind-Ramos (1953, Puerto Rico)-- large-scale assemblages of found objects

Eustáquio Neves (1955, Brazil) is a self-taught photographer, who, since the late 1980s, has produced works connecting the past and present of Afro-disporic presence in Brazil.

Ranti Bam (1982, Lagos, Nigeria, Lives in Paris and Lagos,  Black Ifa 1, 2 and 3 (2025-26).  Bam draws inspiration from Ifa, a word in Yoruba that means both 'divination' and 'to pull close'. Her pieces are portals where spirits and the living encounter one another.  

Carrie Schneider (1978, Chicago, Lives in New York City).  Schneider uses analogue photographic methods to investigate media formats.

 

Georgina Mazim (1980, Harare, Zimbabwe), Borrowed books and underlined statements, 2023-26

Looks like bird on a wire

There were a number of amazing pieces by Guadalupe Maravilla (b. 1976, San Salvador, lives in New York City).  He is a transdisciplinary visual artist and choreographer.  In 1984, he was part of the first wave of unaccompanied children to arrive at the US border in the 1980s as a result of the Salvadoran Civil War.  In 2016, he became a US citizen and changed his name to Guadalupe Maravilla.   "His works explores how the systemic abuse of immigrants physically manifests in the body, reflecting on his own battle with cancer.  Inspired by the Acapulco chairs he found comfort in as a child growing up in El Salvador, these hand-woven and richly ornamented works incorporate an array of animistic objects.  The sculptures  serve as a vibrant testament to perseverance and humanity amidst uncertainty and fear".

ICE Age Disease Thrower, 2026

There were a number of pieces by Nick Cave (1959, Chicago).  I have always loved his amazing Soundsuits.  Here his work features monumental bronzes in positions of waiting, perishing or rescue.

Two Points in Time- At Once, 2026

Akinbode Akinbiyi (1946, Oxford, lives in Berlin), Ndakaru (Dakar) series

In Alfredo Jaar's (1956, Santiago, Chile, lives in Lisbon, Portugal), The End of the World (2023-2024), cobalt, rare earths, copper, tin, nickel, lithium, manganese, coltan, germanium and platinum are pressed into a four-centimetre-square cube.  These metals are ten of the most critical minerals in the world today, essential for technologies at the centre of both the green transition and war-making.  The physical, environmental and human consequences of acquiring these metals are dizzying.  "Placed in the centre of a soaring space, Alfredo Jaar condenses the vast tangles of global tragedies into a precise work of pathos and poetry."

The red room with the cube at one end

Tiny condensed cube of the 10 critical minerals

Senzeni Marasela (1977, Thokoza, South Africa, lives in Johannesburg), There are seven suspended textile works that incorporate cascading lengths of red wool hand-stitched onto tjali, mixed-fabric ceremonial blankets.  The stitch patterns trace maps of mine slopes that have collapsed and the titles refer to notorious mining disasters.  Marasela grew up near an abandoned gold mine.  'She deals with the emotional and political impact of mining on African women's lives and the irreparable damage that apartheid's forced migration and labour systems caused to Black families'. 

Back of the textiles

There were a number of works by Bonnie Devine (1952, Toronto), who also exhibited in the Giardini section of the Biennale.  The series of 78 mixed-media works on paper was entitled; Stories from the Shield: Radiation and Radiance, 1999.  These works examine her home, the Anishinaabe community of Genaabaajing Serpent River First Nation, where she deals with the impacts of uranium mining in the watershed of the radioactive Serpent River. 

Part of the series

There was a small room with an immersive installation, with images, words and sounds by Laurie Anderson (1947, Chicago, lives in NYC).  Notebook is a collection of stories, lyrics, theories, quotations, and questions.  "In America we are living in a reality crisis."  She quotes Allen Ginsberg- America, why are your libraries full of tears?

Note the ICE agent on the left

Great quote from Emma Goldman- "if voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."

Great quote from Lou Reed--- very relevant

We left the Corderie exhibits and took a free 3-4 minute shuttle cart to the Italy and China pavilions located near the Arsenale basin.

Nick Cave, Amalgam (Origin), looks across the Arsenale basin.  Intricate nature designs lace up its body to a crown of branches, flowers and birds.

Wonderful sculptures en route

There was a fantastic exhibit at the Italian Pavilion.  All the works were done by Chiara Camoni (1974, Piacenza, Italy)  entitled: Dialoghi.  Part of the large exhibit included 24 life-sized sculptures.  They were created using clay-based terracotta.  

An offering-- these sculptures were amazing

Outside the Italian Pavilion was a view across the water to a number of large hands.

We stopped at the China Pavilion next to the Italian Pavilion. Outside the Pavilion, Symbiosis features a thousand copper lotuses and sunflowers.  Build on a foundation of sand and enclosed by stainless steel plates to resemble an ark, it serves as a metaphor for the state of symbiosis.

Xu Jiang, Symbiosis (2024-26)

Reflecting back from the lotuses

There was an incredible piece inside the China Pavilion. The title was Dream Stream.  It was noted that "we are currently living in an era where technology is reshaping the world with unprecedented power. The Chinese classical triad of "Firmament, Earth and Human" is transforming into a new existential framework: "Firmament, Earth, Human and Algorithms".

Installation by Zheng Jing and Wu Junyong in collaboration with scientists from Zhejiang Lab, projects dynamic light from high above into the ground.

Alonso putting his hand into the light 

Buildings across the water

Other structures across the water

We took the shuttle back to a number of adjoining National Pavilions near the Corderie.  

We did not have a lot of time before the site closed at 6:00 p.m.  We hurried through a number of smaller National Pavilions.

Lebanon- Don't Get Me Wrong

Works by Nabil Nahas (1949, Beirut, lives in New York City)-- a fabulous frieze--"drawing on a visual language enriched by references to the great Mediterranean civilizations- Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian, Byzantine and Islamic-- Nahas embodies the convergence of these legacies, conveying a message of pluralism and intercultural dialogue".

In the Latvian pavilion- Untamed Assembly:  Backstage of Utopia- newly commissioned work by the interdisciplinary artist duo MAREUNROL'S in dialogue with the archives of Untamed Fashion Assemblies, experimental festivals of fashion art, and performance founded by artist Bruno Birmanis, held in Latvia between 1990 and 1999.

Oman Pavilion--- 'Sand from Oman, Silver mede by many hands.  Walk slowly, Listen'.

The Irish Pavilion was the last one we visited.  The exhibit was entitled: Dreamshook which describes "the feeling upon waking when reality is unsettled and strange or enticing possibilities linger awhile".  All works by Isabel Nolan (1974, Dublin).  Nolan looks to the Middle Ages and early Renaissance as a time resonant of the present day; a turbulent era shaped by religious and political upheaval, plague, war and famine, alongside transformative cultural and technological change.  One work depicts Aldo Manuzio (c.1450-1515), a printer based in Venice who urged people to choose words over weapons.

As we were leaving, we stopped for a few minutes at the bookshop.  The walls were hung with posters for past Biennales.

Great posters of past Biennales. 

WOW!  What a day full of fabulous art !

Nice light crossing the bridge in the other direction

We got back to our 'hood around sunset and stopped for a gelato at Rosa Salva, which has operated since 1879.  Alonso had pistachio, his favourite flavour, and I had non-dairy melon. Very tasty.

In front of Rosa Salva

Sunset just across from Rosa Salva and just a few minutes from our apartment.

Homeward bound

We went out again at about 8:30 p.m. and shared a pizza (ham, tomato sauce and mushrooms-no dairy), and a mixed salad with a glass of wine at a nearby Osteria.  Not too heavy a meal.  No pictures as we were hungry and had eaten most of the pizza before I remembered to take a picture.

We thoroughly enjoyed the art at the Arsenale. I talked to a woman from Poland who has been coming to the Biennale for years (just an hour flight for her). She said that even if some people say they do not enjoy modern art, the Biennale has something for everyone.  The works exhibited are at a very high level. We really enjoyed the vast majority of the exhibition. 

The In Minor Keys theme worked well, though there was a thread of sadness due to the sudden passing of Koyo Kouoh, the curator.  We highly, highly recommend a visit to the Biennale. It is definitely in our calendar for 2028.

On Monday, October 6, our last full day in Venice, we are travelling to the island of Murano.