The worst thing you could do to the German Pavilion, Henrike Naumann decided, per a wall text, would be to “make it cozy.” Adorning the windows of the space—which was remodeled by the Nazis in 1938 in an overtly fascist style that it still maintains—she added holes to domestic-feeling curtains, fabric in denim and gingham. But cozy they are not. Some have violent rips; others have holes fixed neatly with grommets. None, as far as I can tell, are patched over seamlessly.
This year’s Venice Biennale marks the first edition under the organization’s new president, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco—himself associated with neo-fascist politics. The chatter around it focuses on his claim of “neutrality,” allowing any and all countries to participate regardless of whether they are in the midst of committing crimes against humanity.
All this violence—and art’s complicity in it, as a tool for soft power and reputation laundering—looms over the national pavilions. And even more so after the exhibition jury announced it would not consider pavilions from countries whose leaders are currently charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court as contenders for Golden Lions—only to soon after announce they were quitting the job altogether. The reversal leaves us wondering what must have happened internally between the first statement and the second, which is notably short and vague.
Naumann is our best guide through the art, the politics, and the way the two relate. The installation is her best yet—which makes it all the more tragic that she died this past February, before seeing it installed, at just 42. Her collection of objects, arranged in a grid on a wall, features gas masks and decorative pitchforks alongside postmodern candleholders and eyeball-shaped mirrors. It all upends any idea of the domestic space as a site of retreat.
On the building’s exterior, Sung Tieu joins Naumann in blurring domestic and political architecture, recreating the mosaic façade of her former home: a prefab GDR socialist housing block meant for foreign contract workers.
Naumann, per a wall text, explored “the friction between opposing political opinions in relation to taste and personal everyday aesthetics”—a friction easily felt in the Giardini, where I spent the day. (It has mostly European pavilions.) I was working up the courage to test this idea while many were boycotting the US and Russian pavilions. (This year, Israel is in the Arsenale while its pavilion is under construction.) I felt it was my duty as a journalist to see, report, and reveal what’s inside—but I also felt my stomach churn at the thought of the kinds of people likely inside. Naumann’s curiosity about taste across politics gave me some courage.
Alma Allen at the US Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Here is what I found: It might be considered welcome news. If fascists were tragically talented when it came to aesthetics in the 20th century, this time around their art is firmly farcical. The US Pavilion was emptier than I’ve ever seen it—but was that because of MAGA, or because the art is bad? The two have everything to do with one another. On offer was none of Italy’s Futurism, no Mussolini’s Rome: I breezed through a bunch of unimpressive blobs, pausing on a goldish statue that looked like Gumby in the fetal position, just trying to feel something, anything. These bland blobs, by Alma Allen, find their counterpoint in the equally boring Russian Pavilion, where the collective Toloka Ensemble is displaying a bunch of cut flowers and distributing free vodka.
Andreas Angelidakis at the Greek Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Premiering at the 1934 edition of the Biennale—the year Hitler met Mussolini in Venice to swap notes—was the Greek Pavilion. That was also the year the Nazis began persecuting homosexuals. Like Naumann, Andreas Angelidakis responds to its fascist aesthetic history, and to the ways Greek officials have wielded Classical history for nationalist gain. The installation features cartoonish stuffed columns printed with chains, a floor that lights up like a discotheque, and giant T-shirt-shaped works bearing S&M imagery, like cops handcuffing naked, chiseled men.
But where Naumann so deftly navigated the complexity of politics in the aesthetic domain, Angelidakis rehashes a cliché: Susan Sontag was already horny for Leni Riefenstahl’s vibe in 1975. And while I don’t think Angelidakis is promoting fascism exactly, it’s also not clear what the critique is, if any. The wall text promises an amalgamation of an escape room and Plato’s Cave—but in being both, it is also neither.
It bears repeating that there’s no way to think about our times without complexity and contradiction. This doesn’t mean both-sidesing everything, or abandoning agency where we have it. It just means that once you start to boycott, it becomes hard to know exactly where to draw the line, since so much is so fraught—and since pretty much all of us biennial-going types are, in some way, complicit.
Florentina Holzinger at the Austrian Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Florentina Holzinger, at the Austrian Pavilion, nails this clusterfuck swimmingly. “Sea World” presents a closed loop: a naked femme snorkeling in a dunk tank flanked by port-a-potties that visitors can pee in. Sweet relief—Venice rivals New York as the hardest city in which to find a bathroom. That pee is filtered into the tank—filled with audience-contributed bodily fluids—and, on occasion, another naked performer jet-skis through the water, which flows into the pavilion—or so they say.
That description only scratches the surface. It’s a wildly successful pavilion—at once chaotic and sparse, maximalist and conceptually tight, ridiculous and literal. If it’s spectacle, it’s also ugly and gross. If you’re icked out about the pee water, I have bad news for you about the ocean. Where does pollution end and cleanliness begin, Holzinger asks?
Holzinger’s tank dweller is described as a “future biological survivor.” Two other pavilions—right across from one another—take on our biological future in the form of declining birth rates. Maja Malou Lyse, at the Danish Pavilion, responds to a study suggesting that watching VR porn can enhance sperm motility. Working with the collective DIS, they created fertility PSAs on an immersive screen. Porn actors strip while relaying information—hoping to hold your attention—while baby imagery is intercut with women whose bodies have Venus of Willendorf proportions. Yet dressed in micro-bikinis, they read more as symbols of sex than fertility. If only more mainstream depictions of mothers acknowledged that women can be both.
In another room, videos installed in relic-like containers show footage of men “sperm racing”—a sport that is, apparently, real. Men ejaculate, then watch under a microscope how far and fast their sperm can travel.
Ei Arakawa at the Japan Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
A wall text frames the declining birth rate as a crisis caused by an “erosion of intimacy,” evading the politics explaining the decline and that of whether it even matters. But Ei Arakawa, across the way at the Japan Pavilion, gets more specific. The wall text begins: “Babies are born anywhere, regardless of wars, terrors, and boycotts. Babies are also killed by drone attacks, missiles, and every imaginable act of violence.” It goes on to outline the implications: labor shortages, healthcare strain.
Visitors are invited to carry a baby doll while moving through Arakawa’s sculptures and videos, literally feeling the weight—of the child, and of the future.
