The Venice Biennale is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy, by the Biennale Foundation. It focuses on contemporary art, and includes events for art, contemporary dance, architecture, cinema, and theatre. Two main components of the festival are known as the Art Biennale and the Architecture Biennale, which are held in alternating years. The others – Biennale Musica, Biennale Teatro, Venice Film Festival, and Venice Dance Biennale – are held annually. The main exhibition held in Castello alternates between art and architecture, and there are around 30 permanent pavilions built by different countries.
The Egyptian pavilion is a national pavilion of the Venice Biennale. It houses Egypt's official representation during the Biennale. The building is part of a complex that Brenno Del Giudice designed in 1932 to house Venetian decorative arts on Sant'Elena Island—an expansion of the Biennale from its main Giardini area. The building later served as Switzerland's national pavilion before the country moved to a new pavilion in 1952 and left the building to Egypt. The national pavilions for Serbia and Venice flank the Egyptian pavilion. Egypt's 1995 exhibition won the Biennale's Golden Lion award for best national pavilion.
The 57th Venice Biennale was an international contemporary art exhibition held between May and November 2017. The Venice Biennale takes place biennially in Venice, Italy. Artistic director Christine Macel, the chief curator at the Centre Pompidou, curated its central exhibition, "Viva Arte Viva", as a series of interconnected pavilions designed to reflect art's capacity for expanding humanism. The curator also organized a project, "Unpacking My Library", based on a Walter Benjamin essay, to list artists' favorite books. Macel was the first French director since 1995 and the fourth woman to direct the Biennale. A trend of presenting overlooked, rediscovered, or "emerging dead artists" was a theme of the 57th Biennale.
Anne Barlow is a curator and director in the field of international contemporary art, and is currently Director of Tate St Ives, Art Fund Museum of the Year 2018. There she directs and oversees the artistic vision and programme, including temporary exhibitions, collection displays, artist residencies, new commissions, and a learning and research programme. At Tate St Ives, Barlow has curated solo exhibitions of work by artists including: Outi Pieski (2024); Hera Büyüktaşcıyan (2023); Burçak Bingöl (2022); Prabhakar Pachpute (2022); Thảo Nguyên Phan (2022); Petrit Halilaj (2021); Haegue Yang (2020); Otobong Nkanga (2019); Huguette Caland (2019); Amie Siegel (2018) and Rana Begum (2018). She was also co-curator of "Naum Gabo: Constructions for Real Life" (2020) and collaborating curator with Castello di Rivoli, Turin for Anna Boghiguian at Tate St Ives (2019).
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is a contemporary art curator and writer. He lives in Berlin.
The national pavilions host each participant nation's official representation during the Venice Biennale, an international art biennial exhibition held in Venice, Italy. Some countries own pavilion buildings in the Giardini della Biennale while others rent buildings throughout the city, but each country controls its own selection process and production costs.
The Canadian pavilion houses Canada's national representation during the Venice Biennale arts festivals.
The Brazilian pavilion houses Brazil's national representation during the Venice Biennale arts festivals.
The Serbian pavilion is a national pavilion of the Venice Biennale arts festivals. It houses Serbia's national representation.
The Russian pavilion houses Russia's national representation during the Venice Biennale arts festivals.
The Polish pavilion houses Poland's national representation during the Venice Biennale arts festivals.
The Finnish pavilion houses Finland's national representation during the Venice Biennale arts festivals.
The Nordic Pavilion houses the national representation of the Nordic countries Sweden, Norway, and Finland during the Venice Biennale arts festivals.
The Danish pavilion houses Denmark's national representation during the Venice Biennale arts festivals. The building was designed by Carl Brummer and constructed between 1930 and 1932, and restored and expanded by Peter Koch in the 1950s.
Pilvi Takala is a performance artist presenting candid camera as art. Takala won the Dutch Prix de Rome in 2011 and the Emdash Award in 2013. Her works have been exhibited in various exhibitions worldwide, including London, Aarhus and Glasgow. She is known best for being in time-based media. In 2022, Takala represented Finland in the 59th Venice Biennale.
The 59th Venice Biennale was an international contemporary art exhibition held between April and November 2022, having been delayed a year due to the COVID pandemic. The Venice Biennale takes place biennially in Venice, Italy. Artistic director Cecilia Alemani curated its central exhibition.
Outi Pieski is a Sámi visual artist from Finland whose paintings, collages and installations employ traditional handicrafts such as the tassels of Sámi shawls to depict the light and landscapes of the far north. In 2017, she was honoured with the Fine Arts Academy of Finland Award.
Zoé Whitley is an American art historian and curator who has been director of Chisenhale Gallery since 2020. Based in London, she has held curatorial positions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Tate galleries, and the Hayward Gallery. At the Tate galleries, Whitley co-curated the 2017 exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, which ARTnews called one of the most important art exhibitions of the 2010s. Soon after she was chosen to organise the British pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale.
Bita Razavi is an Iranian-born contemporary visual artist. She lives between Helsinki, Finland and Mahu, Estonia. Her works, which have been exhibited in various exhibitions worldwide, look into the inner workings of social systems in relation with the political structures and national events of historic proportions in various countries. She works with a broad range of media including video, photography, installation, sound and performance.
