Artist queers the pavilion idea

Andreas Angelidakis is turning Greece’s pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale into “Escape Room,” an installation that treats the national pavilion itself as the subject. (observer.com) The work opens May 9 and runs through November 22, 2026, in the Giardini in Venice, with Giorgos Bekirakis as curator and Andreas Angelidakis representing Greece at the 61st International Art Exhibition. (daysofart.gr) (myartguides.com) Angelidakis told Observer he is using the Greek Pavilion’s architecture and 1934 debut as source material, describing the project as an anti-fascist “escape room” with camp elements and references ranging from virtual reality to Plato’s cave. (observer.com) That pavilion model is central to the Venice Biennale itself: countries mount separate national presentations, often in permanent buildings in the Giardini, while the 61st edition opens on May 9, 2026. (theartnewspaper.com) Angelidakis and Bekirakis are explicitly framing those buildings as political objects, not neutral galleries. In the Greek Pavilion statement, Angelidakis says the national pavilions were designed to express the convictions of the governments that built them, and Bekirakis describes the Greek pavilion as a “queer” body narrating tensions in European identity. (daysofart.gr) The project’s historical anchor is 1934, the year the Greek and Austrian pavilions opened in Venice. The Greek Pavilion materials tie that date to Hitler and Benito Mussolini’s first meeting in Venice and to the Nazis’ persecution of homosexuals. (daysofart.gr) The installation recasts Plato’s cave as a contemporary media environment. Official pavilion materials say it places the allegory in an era of “post-truth,” digital illusion and nationalist populism, with the pavilion trying to escape its own history. (myartguides.com) (daysofart.gr) Observer’s profile adds the visual register Angelidakis is bringing to that argument: Byzantine columns, Peggy Guggenheim’s glasses, soft sculptures and even riot shields bought online. He said visitors will be able to interact with the sculptures inside what he called a “Byzantium goth disco.” (observer.com) The result is a pavilion that does not present Greece as a fixed national image so much as a building arguing with its own past. When “Escape Room” opens in Venice on May 9, the Greek Pavilion will be staging that argument inside one of the Biennale’s oldest nationalist formats. (observer.com) (myartguides.com)