Vatican’s sound pavilion

The Vatican is turning its 2026 Venice Biennale pavilion into a sound project built around Saint Hildegard of Bingen. (theartnewspaper.com) The Holy See pavilion will run during the 61st International Art Exhibition from May 9 to November 22, 2026, with contributions from Brian Eno, FKA twigs, Patti Smith, Jim Jarmusch, Precious Okoyomon, Otobong Nkanga and Kali Malone. Twenty-four artists were selected for the project, which is titled *The Ear is the Eye of the Soul*. (theartnewspaper.com) The exhibition is split across two Venice sites: the Mystical Garden of the Discalced Carmelite in Cannaregio and the Santa Maria Ausiliatrice complex in Castello. In the garden, visitors will use headphones to hear 20 new commissions made with Soundwalk Collective, alongside a site-specific instrument that listens to the garden in real time. (theartnewspaper.com) Hildegard of Bingen was a Benedictine abbess, poet, healer and composer who lived from 1098 to 1179. Pope Benedict the Sixteenth formally declared her a saint and a doctor of the Catholic Church in 2012. (theartnewspaper.com) The Vatican’s project arrives inside a Biennale that will include 99 national participations and 31 collateral events across Venice. The main exhibition, *In Minor Keys*, will proceed from the plan set by curator Koyo Kouoh and run on the same May 9 to November 22 schedule. (labiennale.org) The Holy See has been using Venice biennales to test new formats in public view. At the 2025 Architecture Biennale, it presented *Opera Aperta* at Santa Maria Ausiliatrice, framing the site as a restoration project tied to concerts, social programs and public access to the work in progress. (ewtnnews.com) That makes the 2026 art pavilion look less like a one-off guest appearance and more like a continuing Vatican strategy in Venice: reuse church-linked spaces, invite contemporary artists, and connect religious history to current artistic practice. This year, the medium is sound rather than architecture. (ewtnnews.com) (theartnewspaper.com) The curators are Hans Ulrich Obrist, the artistic director of the Serpentine, and Ben Vickers, a curator and publisher who founded the Arts Technologies department at the Serpentine. Soundwalk Collective, the sound art platform founded in 2001, is collaborating on the project. (theartnewspaper.com) By the time the Biennale opens on May 9, visitors will be walking into a Vatican pavilion that asks them to listen first. In Venice this year, the Holy See is presenting spiritual history through headphones, live acoustics and a medieval saint’s afterlife in contemporary art. (labiennale.org) (theartnewspaper.com)