Estonian painter’s live run

Merike Estna will spend the full 2026 Venice Biennale painting in public, turning Estonia’s pavilion into a working studio for more than six months. (cca.ee) The Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art said Estna’s project, *The House of Leaking Sky*, will unfold throughout the Biennale, which runs from May 9 to November 22, 2026, with preview days on May 6, 7, and 8. (cca.ee) (labiennale.org) The pavilion is at Patronato Salesiano Leone XIII in Venice, and Estna will paint there in view of visitors during the exhibition’s Tuesday-through-Sunday opening schedule. (e-flux.com) (labiennale.org) Estna was selected to represent Estonia at the 61st International Art Exhibition, and the project is curated by Natalia Sielewicz. Estna is based in Tallinn and Mexico City and has built a practice around treating painting as something that can spread across rooms, objects, and bodies rather than stay fixed on a single canvas. (cca.ee) (temnikova.ee) The format pushes painting closer to performance at a Biennale that opens under the title *In Minor Keys*. La Biennale di Venezia says the 2026 exhibition will take place across the Giardini, the Arsenale, and other sites in Venice. (labiennale.org) (news.artnet.com) Artnet reported that Estna’s pavilion sits inside a broader turn toward performance-style painting, as artists make the act of painting itself part of what audiences come to see. (news.artnet.com) Another detail sets the timetable: Estonian public broadcaster ERR reported that the pavilion opens on Wednesday, May 6, before the Biennale’s public opening three days later, and that the exhibition is expected to return to Estonia in 2027. (news.err.ee) A recent interview described the installation as a monumental work spread across 22 canvases and completed over six months, with visitors seeing not a finished painting but one still being made. (loophole.art) By the time the Biennale closes on November 22, the work on the walls will also be a record of the run itself: a national pavilion measured not just in paintings, but in days spent painting. (labiennale.org) (e-flux.com)