Queering the pavilion
Artist Andreas Angelidakis is presenting work at Venice that explicitly aims to 'queer' the idea of the national pavilion, tying his project to the Biennale’s contested political history and references to 1934’s fascist-era symbolism. (observer.com)
Andreas Angelidakis is turning Greece’s pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale into “Escape Room,” an installation he says is meant to queer the idea of the national pavilion. (observer.com) The work opens with the 61st International Art Exhibition on May 9, 2026, and runs through November 22 in the Giardini in Venice. Greece named Angelidakis to represent the country in July 2025, with Giorgos Bekiaris as curator and the Metropolitan Organization of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki, known as MOMus, managing the project. (labiennale.org) (iefimerida.gr) (myartguides.com) Angelidakis and Bekiaris describe the pavilion as a present-day version of Plato’s cave, with soft sculptures and an immersive layout built around “post-truth,” digital illusion and nationalist politics. Official project texts say the installation treats national pavilions as structures that once communicated state ideology and now expose how nationalism and propaganda get turned into culture. (daysofart.gr) (myartguides.com) (escapegrecia.com) The focus on the building itself is central to the project because the Greek Pavilion opened in 1934, the year Angelidakis and the curatorial text tie to fascist politics in Europe. The project materials point to 1934 as the year Hitler and Benito Mussolini first met in Venice and as the year Nazi Germany intensified persecution of homosexuals. (observer.com) (daysofart.gr) That framing lands inside a Biennale system still organized around national pavilions in the Giardini, where countries present themselves through separate buildings and official selections. Angelidakis’s project uses that format rather than ignoring it, recasting the pavilion as a “queer body,” in Bekiaris’s words, that can narrate identities and histories that official versions of nationhood left out. (myartguides.com) (daysofart.gr) Observer reported that Angelidakis filled the installation’s references with Byzantine columns, Peggy Guggenheim’s glasses, Fire Island gatherings and riot shields bought online, mixing camp style with political history. He told the magazine he treats the pavilion “as a being with consciousness,” with the building itself acting as the subject. (observer.com) The Biennale around it will proceed under the title “In Minor Keys,” the exhibition conceived by curator Koyo Kouoh and scheduled for preview days on May 6, 7 and 8 before the public opening on May 9. La Biennale di Venezia said it is carrying out Kouoh’s exhibition with the support of her family. (labiennale.org) So the Greek entry is not just another national presentation in Venice this spring. It is a pavilion about the politics of pavilions, staged inside a 1934 building that Angelidakis wants to make speak in a different voice. (observer.com) (daysofart.gr)
