Biennale artists rethink pavilions
Australia has named 60‑year‑old Khaled Sabsabi to represent the country at Venice, giving the Biennale at least one concrete national anchor amid rising geopolitical tension (watoday.com.au). At the same time, artists like Andreas Angelidakis are explicitly reimagining what a “national pavilion” can be, pushing the Biennale debate toward identity and form rather than simple national displays (observer.com).
Australia’s pick for Venice ended up becoming a test of what a “national pavilion” even is. Creative Australia says Khaled Sabsabi, working with curator Michael Dagostino, will represent the country at the 61st Venice Biennale from May 9 to November 22, 2026, after the pair were recommissioned on July 2, 2025. (creative.gov.au) That sounds routine until you get to the backstory. Creative Australia first announced Sabsabi and Dagostino on February 7, 2025, then later recommissioned them, turning one pavilion into a very public argument about who gets to stand in for a nation. (creative.gov.au, creative.gov.au) Sabsabi is not being framed as a simple flag-bearer. Creative Australia says his 2026 project is titled “for the first time in my life,” and it will be the first time an Australian representative shows work both in the Australia Pavilion and in the Biennale’s main international exhibition. (creative.gov.au, creative.gov.au) That second venue matters because the Venice Biennale is built like two overlapping shows. La Biennale di Venezia says the 2026 edition includes “In Minor Keys,” the main exhibition conceived by Koyo Kouoh, plus 99 national participations and 31 collateral events spread across Venice. (labiennale.org, labiennale.org) So the old model is still there: countries get rooms, buildings, and branding. But the pressure on that model is rising, because the Biennale only grants official national pavilion status to countries with diplomatic ties to Italy, which means geopolitics is built into the floor plan before any art goes on the wall. (artnews.com, labiennale.org) That is why artists have started treating the pavilion itself as material. In an April 2026 interview, Athens-based artist and architect Andreas Angelidakis said he is “queering the idea of a national pavilion” for Greece instead of using the building as a straightforward national showcase. (observer.com) Angelidakis’s version is deliberately messy and mixed. Observer describes a project that pulls together Byzantine columns, Peggy Guggenheim’s glasses, and riot shields bought from Temu, which turns the pavilion from a neat country display into something closer to a collage of symbols, memories, and consumer debris. (observer.com) That shift lines up with the mood of the 2026 Biennale more broadly. La Biennale says Kouoh’s exhibition will proceed under the title “In Minor Keys,” and Observer reported in February that 111 artists were announced for that main show after Kouoh’s death, with her team describing the exhibition as a collective score rather than a parade of fixed identities. (labiennale.org, observer.com) Seen that way, Sabsabi and Angelidakis are working on the same problem from different sides. One is anchoring Australia’s pavilion with a recommissioned national representative, and the other is loosening Greece’s pavilion from the idea that a country has one stable face to present. (creative.gov.au, observer.com) Venice is still full of flags, maps, and official country names in 2026. But the artists getting the most attention are using those same pavilions less like embassies and more like arguments about migration, memory, diplomacy, and who is allowed to belong inside a national story. (labiennale.org, creative.gov.au, observer.com)
