UAE pavilion asks you to listen
At the 61st Venice Biennale the UAE pavilion — titled 'Washwasha' — foregrounds listening, using whispers, echoes and shared histories carried through sound as the central experience. (thenationalnews.com)
The United Arab Emirates will use sound, not spectacle, for its 2026 Venice Biennale pavilion, with an exhibition called *Washwasha* built around whispering, memory and listening. (nationalpavilionuae.org) *Washwasha* opens with the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, which runs from May 9 to November 22, 2026, after a three-day preview from May 6 to May 8. The pavilion will be shown at the Arsenale’s Sale d’Armi. (labiennale.org) (universes.art) The show is curated by Bana Kattan, with Tala Nassar as assistant curator, and brings together six artists: Mays Albaik, Jawad Al Malhi, Farah Al Qasimi, Alaa Edris, Lamya Gargash and Taus Makhacheva. The National Pavilion UAE said their work examines sound in the Emirates through migration, transience and long ties to the land. (wam.ae) (nationalpavilionuae.org) The premise is simple: sound carries history even when objects do not. The pavilion frames oral storytelling, poetry circles and local broadcasting as ways communities in the United Arab Emirates have represented themselves across different languages and generations. (nationalpavilionuae.org) That approach lands in a Biennale shaped by the theme *In Minor Keys*, the title chosen by the late curator Koyo Kouoh for the 2026 edition. La Biennale said in March that it would carry out Kouoh’s exhibition with the support of her family after her death on May 10, 2025. (labiennale.org 1) (labiennale.org 2) For the UAE, this is its ninth participation in the International Art Exhibition, a run that has turned the pavilion into a regular platform for artists from and connected to the country. The pavilion is commissioned by the Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation and supported by the Ministry of Culture. (nationalpavilionuae.org) (universes.art) The exhibition’s title comes from the Arabic word for whispering, and the organizers describe it as a way into questions of movement, technology, oral history, language, the body and identity. In practice, that shifts attention from a single national story to overlapping voices shaped by work, travel and settlement in the Gulf. (nationalpavilionuae.org) (al-monitor.com) The result is a pavilion asking visitors to lean in rather than look up. In Venice this spring, the United Arab Emirates is betting that a whisper can travel further than a monument. (thenationalnews.com)
