59th Venice Biennale


The 59th Venice Biennale is an upcoming international contemporary art exhibition to be held between April and November 2022. The Venice Biennale takes place biennially in Venice, Italy. Artistic director Cecilia Alemani will curate its central exhibition.

Background

The Venice Biennale is an international art biennial exhibition held in Venice, Italy. Often described as "the Olympics of the art world", participation in the Biennale is a prestigious event for contemporary artists. The festival has become a constellation of shows: a central exhibition curated by that year's artistic director, national pavilions hosted by individual nations, and independent exhibitions throughout Venice. The Biennale parent organization also hosts regular festivals in other arts: architecture, dance, film, music, and theater.
Outside of the central, international exhibition, individual nations produce their own shows, known as pavilions, as their national representation. Nations that own their pavilion buildings, such as the 30 housed on the Giardini, are responsible for their own upkeep and construction costs as well. Nations without dedicated buildings create pavilions in the Venice Arsenale and palazzos throughout the city.
The 59th Biennale will run from April 23, 2022, through November. Originally scheduled for the year prior, the COVID-19 pandemic postponed the 2020 architecture biennale into 2021 and the art biennale into 2022. As a result of the displacement, the art biennale will coincide with Documenta 15, another major contemporary art exhibition.

Central exhibition

will curate the Biennale's central exhibition. The chief curator of High Line Art previously curated the 2017 Biennale's Italian pavilion. She is the first Italian woman to serve as the Biennale's artistic director. Her husband, Massimiliano Gioni, curated the 2013 Biennale. After the exhibition was postponed one year due to the coronavirus pandemic, Alemani hoped to use the extra year to prepare new projects and use the opening, which now precedes Liberation Day, to mark an occasion of togetherness.

National pavilions

Countries began to announce their national representatives following the 58th Biennale exhibition, in which 90 national pavilions participated. Each country selects artists to show at their pavilion, ostensibly with an eye to the Biennale's theme.
NationLocationArtistCuratorRef
AustraliaGiardiniMarco FusinatoAlexie Glass-Kantor
AustriaGiardini and Ashley Hans Scheirl
BelgiumGiardiniFrancis AlÿsHilde Teerlinck
CanadaGiardiniStan DouglasTBD
FinlandGiardiniPilvi TakalaChristina Li
FranceGiardini
GermanyGiardiniYilmaz Dziewior
Great BritainGiardiniSonia BoyceTBD
IcelandAround VeniceSigurður Guðjónsson
NetherlandsAround VeniceMelanie BonajoMaaike Gouwenberg, Geir Haraldseth, Soraya Pol
New ZealandAround VeniceYuki KiharaNatalie King
SwitzerlandGiardiniLatifa EchakhchFrancesco Stocchi