Venice Biennale 2026: When the Collateral Events Steal the Show

Every Venice Biennale arrives with enormous expectations. This year's edition, however, left many visitors with mixed feelings. While the official exhibition offers moments of genuine interest, it often struggles to achieve the urgency and intellectual coherence that have characterized some of the strongest recent editions.

Yet Venice has a way of rescuing itself. Beyond the official programme, the city is overflowing with exhibitions, performances and collateral events that often prove more memorable than the Biennale itself. During our visit, several projects stood out for their ambition, emotional impact and sheer artistic confidence.

Belgium: Miet Warlop's Choreography of Collective Energy

The Belgian Pavilion presents a performance conceived and directed by Miet Warlop, one of Belgium's most distinctive multidisciplinary artists. Known for blending theatre, visual art and choreography, Warlop creates environments where absurdity, physical endurance and collective action merge into a powerful spectacle.

The performance transforms the pavilion into a living organism, where movement becomes a language of resistance, vulnerability and celebration. It is one of the most dynamic contributions among the national pavilions.

Austria: Florentina Holzinger Pushes the Limits

Few artists provoke stronger reactions than Florentina Holzinger. The Austrian artist and choreographer has built an international reputation through radical performances that challenge conventions surrounding the body, gender and power.

Her contribution to the Austrian Pavilion is uncompromising, physically demanding and deliberately confrontational. Holzinger's work operates somewhere between contemporary dance, performance art and endurance ritual, creating an experience that is impossible to ignore, even for those who may disagree with its methods.

Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince at Fondazione Prada

One of the highlights outside the Biennale grounds is the presentation of Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince at Fondazione Prada.

Jafa continues his exploration of race, history and image-making in contemporary America. Through film, photography and installation, he constructs powerful visual narratives that expose both trauma and resilience within Black culture.

Placed alongside him, Richard Prince brings his long-standing investigation into appropriation and media imagery. Together, the two artists create an unexpectedly productive dialogue about authorship, representation and cultural memory.

“Strange Rules” at Palazzo Diedo

The exhibition Strange Rules at Palazzo Diedo demonstrates how Venice's collateral programme often surpasses the official exhibition in ambition.

Among the participating artists, Hiroshi Sugimoto contributes works that reflect his lifelong fascination with time, perception and spirituality. His images remain remarkably serene amidst the visual overload of contemporary art.

Philippe Parreno, meanwhile, continues to blur the boundaries between exhibition-making, cinema and immersive environments. His works transform space itself into a medium, creating situations that feel simultaneously controlled and unpredictable.

The exhibition succeeds because it allows radically different artistic voices to coexist without forcing them into a single curatorial narrative.

Matthew Wong: A Poetic Presence

The exhibition dedicated to Matthew Wong offers one of the most moving experiences in Venice this year.

Wong's luminous landscapes and dreamlike compositions occupy a unique position between Western and Eastern painting traditions. Working largely as a self-taught artist, he developed a visual language filled with solitude, beauty and introspection.

His paintings radiate an emotional intensity that feels increasingly rare in contemporary art. The exhibition serves as a reminder of a remarkable talent whose career was tragically cut short.

Lorna Simpson at Punta della Dogana

At Punta della Dogana, Lorna Simpson presents works that continue her nuanced exploration of identity, memory and representation.

Since the 1980s, Simpson has been one of the most influential voices in contemporary photography and conceptual art. Her recent works expand beyond photography into collage, painting and sculpture, while maintaining her characteristic ability to question how images shape personal and collective histories.

The exhibition is elegant, intelligent and visually compelling.

Kaloki Nyamai at the Arsenale

Among the discoveries within the Arsenale, Kaloki Nyamai stands out.

The Kenyan artist creates large-scale works that weave together personal history, mythology and collective memory. Drawing upon Kamba traditions while addressing contemporary social realities, Nyamai produces richly textured surfaces that reward sustained viewing.

His work successfully bridges local narratives and global concerns without sacrificing either complexity or authenticity.

Bonnie Devine: Memory, Land and Indigenous Knowledge

The work of Bonnie Devine offers another powerful contribution within the Arsenale.

An Anishinaabe artist from Canada, Devine explores Indigenous history, storytelling and relationships to land. Her installations combine archival research, drawing and sculptural elements to reveal histories that have often been overlooked or suppressed.

Rather than presenting the past as something fixed, Devine shows how memory remains active, political and deeply connected to the present.

A Biennale Saved by Venice Itself

If one lesson emerged from this year's visit, it is that the Venice Biennale can no longer be judged solely by its official exhibition.

While the central exhibition occasionally feels uneven and surprisingly cautious, the city itself remains an unparalleled platform for contemporary art. The most memorable encounters often occur beyond the curated framework, in palazzos, foundations, churches and temporary exhibition spaces scattered across Venice.

In the end, the Biennale survives not because of a single curatorial vision, but because Venice continues to attract some of the world's most ambitious artists and institutions. The collateral events do not merely complement the Biennale; this year, they are arguably what make it worthwhile.