Estonia will paint in public

Estonia’s pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale will not hide the studio behind the finished work. Artist Merike Estna plans to paint in public throughout the exhibition, turning the act of making into part of the pavilion itself. (e-flux.com) The project is called *The House of Leaking Sky*, and it has been commissioned for Estonia’s national presentation at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. The pavilion is curated by Natalia Sielewicz, an art historian and writer who has been developing the exhibition with Estna since at least late 2024. (cca.ee) That public-making premise gives Estonia a pavilion built around process rather than a sealed final statement. According to the Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art and the project announcement circulated by e-flux, Estna will work in view of visitors for the duration of the Biennale, making performance and painting inseparable parts of the same exhibition. (cca.ee) (e-flux.com) The setting matters here because the Venice Biennale is one of the art world’s biggest recurring international stages. The 61st edition, titled *In Minor Keys*, is scheduled to run from May 9 to November 22, 2026, with preview days on May 6, 7, and 8, across the Giardini, the Arsenale, and other sites in Venice. (labiennale.org) Estonia’s contribution will be installed at Domenico, 1285, Patronato Salesiano Leone XIII in Venice, and the published opening hours list Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. That means viewers are being invited not just to see a national pavilion once, but to encounter an artwork that can shift over repeated visits across more than six months. (e-flux.com) Estna is a fitting artist for that format because her practice has long treated painting as something that can spread beyond the flat canvas. The Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art describes her work as focused on “the processes of painting” and on integrating art with life, while ArtReview noted in 2024 that she draws on craft techniques and traditions often left outside painting’s official history. (cca.ee) (artreview.com) That background helps explain why a live, changing pavilion is more than a theatrical add-on. If painting is treated as a social and bodily activity rather than a static object, then letting visitors witness the labor, repetition, and time inside the work becomes the point, not a backstage extra. This is an inference from how the organizers describe Estna’s practice and the pavilion’s structure. (cca.ee) (e-flux.com) New details reported this week in Estonian public broadcaster ERR suggest the pavilion will also be physically ambitious. ERR said the installation will use 25,000 glazed floor tiles and include a monumental painting assembled on site from 22 canvases, indicating that the public painting element will sit inside a large, materially dense environment rather than a bare studio setup. (err.ee) ERR also reported Estna describing the pavilion as speaking about being a female artist and, in parallel, being a mother. That framing adds another layer to the decision to paint in public: it places visibility on forms of labor that are often split apart in cultural institutions, where finished works are displayed cleanly while the conditions of making them stay mostly unseen. (err.ee) Natalia Sielewicz’s role is central because the pavilion has been presented from the start as a collaboration between artist and curator, not simply an artist selection followed by installation logistics. The Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art said Sielewicz began working with Estna in preparation for the 2026 exposition after being chosen as curator, making the public, process-based format part of the exhibition’s conception rather than a late promotional flourish. (cca.ee) Seen in that light, *The House of Leaking Sky* fits a broader shift in contemporary art toward showing production, duration, and performance alongside objects. What makes the Estonian pavilion stand out is the bluntness of the gesture: instead of presenting painting as a finished surface, it will present painting as an event that keeps happening while the Biennale is open. (e-flux.com) (cca.ee) For visitors in Venice between May and November 2026, that means Estonia’s pavilion may reward return visits more than a single pass. The image people leave with may not be one completed picture, but a memory of watching an artist keep building the exhibition in real time, inside one of the world’s most watched art events. (labiennale.org) (e-flux.com)