VENICE CALLING

FERMATA: HONG KONG IN VENICE

In a significant institutional first, the Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA) — the city’s first public art museum, founded in 1962 — takes over the curatorial reins for Hong Kong’s participation at Venice, departing from the single-artist, single-curator format that defined its presence from 2013 to 2024. Titled Fermata, the collateral programme brings together two artists who draw on Hong Kong’s cultural landscape and the textures of daily life: established media artist Kingsley Ng, known for his poetic, site-specific installations, and emerging artist Angel Hui, whose practice weaves traditional Chinese cultural elements into a contemporary visual language. Together, they offer a quiet counterpoint to the Biennale’s sensory intensity — a concerto of light, sound and movement inviting visitors to pause amid the bustle of the city. Fermata runs 9 May–22 November at Campo della Tana, Castello.

SINGAPORE PAVILION

The Singapore Pavilion presents a major international moment for Amanda Heng, a pioneering artist long under-recognised on the global stage. Curated by Selene Yap, the new site-specific commission responds to In Minor Keysthrough a quiet investigation of the body and lived experience — combining photography, moving image, and architectural design to consider how rest, slowing down, and attentiveness can become forms of resilience and renewal. Heng co-founded The Artists Village, Singapore’s first artist-run space, and Women in the Arts, the country’s first women artists’ collective. Her Venice presentation signals a long-overdue reckoning with her significance to contemporary art practice. The Singapore Pavilion is located at Level 2 of the Arsenale – Sale d’Armi, 9 May–22 November.

PAVILION OF THE KYRGYZ REPUBLIC

Interdisciplinary artist Alexey Morosov transforms the historic former church of Santa Caterina within the Convitto Foscarini into a 600-square-metre immersive installation titled BELEK — a Kyrgyz word translating as “gift.” Curated by Geraldine Leardi, the work centres on water as both a natural resource and sacred cultural inheritance for the people of Kyrgyzstan, drawing on the country’s mountain landscapes and the intergenerational transmission of memory and tradition. The Kyrgyz Republic Pavilion runs 9 May–22 November, Cannaregio district.

WALLACE CHAN: VESSELS OF OTHER WORLDS

Hong Kong-based artist Wallace Chan presents his most ambitious project to date at this year’s Venice Biennale, coinciding with his 70th birthday. Vessels of Other Worlds, curated by James Putnam, introduces a new series of monumental titanium sculptures positioned on the altar of the Chapel of Santa Maria della Pietà — three works inspired by the Olea Sancta, the sacred oils of Catholic blessing ritual, and the stages of life: birth, growth, and death. A digital triptych bridges the Venice presentation with a companion exhibition in Shanghai opening in July 2026, using technology to connect the tangible and the transcendental across two cities. Chan simultaneously presents The Three Graces and Mercury at the Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo. The exhibition runs 8 May–18 October.

KOEN VANMECHELEN: WE THOUGHT WE WERE ALONE

Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen presents his first solo sculptural exhibition in Venice, We Thought We Were Alone, at the Palazzo Rota Ivancich — forty new works spanning bronze, marble, glass, photography and video that move beyond human-centred perspectives to explore the dynamic interplay between living organisms, materials and the inorganic environment. Curated by James Putnam, the exhibition unfolds across the Palazzo’s three floors, with classical statuary reinterpreted alongside animal forms as an expression of Vanmechelen’s ongoing investigation into hybridity, biocultural diversity, and his vision of a Cosmopolitan Renaissance. A dedicated room documents the Wild Gene Festival, a collaboration with Senegalese musician Youssou N’Dour. The exhibition runs 9 May–22 November, Castello.

BARRY X BALL: THE SHAPE OF TIME

The Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore — itself one of Venice’s great architectural landmarks — provides the setting for The Shape of Time, a major survey of American sculptor Barry X Ball curated by critic Bob Nickas. Bringing together twenty-three sculptures, the majority shown publicly for the first time, the exhibition stages a conversation between Ball’s technologically advanced practice and the Renaissance tradition of Palladio’s masterwork. Five distinct series are distributed across carefully chosen sites within the basilica, each exploring the intersection of digital fabrication and classical form. The exhibition opens 9 May and runs to 22 November.

DAVID ČERNÝ: ARTOCALYPSA

Czech artist David Černý brings his irreverent and often unsettling vision to Venice for the first time with Artocalypsa, a survey spanning three decades of work that takes aim at power, authority, and society’s persistent fascination with weapons and military iconography. Presented at the historic former theatre Il Teatro dell’Arte (NuoveFondamenta), the exhibition draws on Černý’s capacity to provoke and unsettle through irony and satire — a disruptive force in contemporary European sculpture whose subversive practice has long blurred the line between high-concept expression and biting social commentary. Artocalypsa runs 9 May–22 November.

Art Collector will have further coverage of the 61st Venice Biennale in the coming weeks.