Vatican’s Venice Pavilion

The Vatican is turning its 2026 Venice Biennale pavilion into a sound project, with FKA twigs and Brian Eno among 24 artists responding to Saint Hildegard of Bingen. (theartnewspaper.com) The Holy See pavilion is titled *The Ear is the Eye of the Soul* and will run during the Biennale from May 9 to November 22, 2026. It will be split between the Mystical Garden of the Discalced Carmelite in Cannaregio and the Santa Maria Ausiliatrice complex in Castello. (theartnewspaper.com) The Vatican said the show takes the form of a “sonic prayer,” with 20 new sound commissions in the garden made with Soundwalk Collective and additional installations at the Castello site. The lineup also includes Patti Smith, Jim Jarmusch, Kali Malone, Otobong Nkanga, Precious Okoyomon, Devonté Hynes and Meredith Monk. (vaticannews.va) Hildegard of Bingen, who lived from 1098 to 1179, was a Benedictine abbess, composer, poet and healer whose music and visions still circulate in church and experimental music circles. Pope Benedict the Sixteenth formally declared her a saint and Doctor of the Church in 2012. (theartnewspaper.com) The pavilion lands inside a Biennale shaped by the late curator Koyo Kouoh’s exhibition *In Minor Keys*, which opens May 9 after preview days on May 6, 7 and 8. La Biennale says it is carrying out Kouoh’s project after her death in May 2025, using the artist list and framework she had already set. (labiennale.org) That main exhibition points in the same direction as the Vatican pavilion: toward living artists and present-tense work. Artnet’s analysis of the 2026 artist list found 111 invited participants, a stronger tilt toward mid-career living artists and a broader geographic spread than in some recent editions. (news.artnet.com; labiennale.org) The Biennale’s official numbers show how large that field is this year: 99 national participations and 31 collateral events alongside the central exhibition. The Vatican entry is one national pavilion, but its artist list looks closer to a cross-disciplinary festival, mixing musicians, poets, filmmakers, architects and monastic voices. (labiennale.org; vaticannews.va) The Holy See has used the Biennale before to test unusual formats. In 2024, its pavilion was staged in a women’s prison on Giudecca; in 2026, it is moving from a carceral setting to cloisters, gardens, headphones and a library built around listening. (theartnewspaper.com; vaticannews.va) One of the Castello works will also serve as a memorial. Vatican News said the site will include the last work by German filmmaker and writer Alexander Kluge, who died in April 2026, and credited him with the pavilion’s title. (vaticannews.va) So the Vatican’s bet this year is not on spectacle but on listening: medieval chant, contemporary sound art and a saint from the 12th century routed through one of the art world’s biggest stages. (theartnewspaper.com; labiennale.org)