A Guide to the 2024 Venice Biennale National Pavilions

Albania

Around a century ago, Russian revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai came up with the glass of water theory, which dictates that, under Communism, fulfilling sexual desires should be about as easy as hydrating oneself. The young Albanian artist Iva Lulashi is now taking up that theory with this pavilion featuring her paintings on love, lust, and more. Antonio Grulli will curate Lulashi’s latest creations.

Location: Arsenale

Argentina

In her sculptures, Luciana Lamothe has sought to destabilize her viewers, making them feel physically unsettled. Witness the case of a 2018 work she produced for Art Basel that took the form of a staircase viewers could ascend to view a plaza far below. Clamps helped to keep the structure from falling apart entirely, amping up the tension as viewers climbed higher. Her Argentine Pavilion, curated by Sofia Dourron, is aptly called “Ojala se derrumben las puertas,” or “Hopefully, the doors will collapse.” It will take the form of a gigantic, curved piece of wood that the artist has called a “queer proposal.”

Location: Arsenale

Armenia

Artist Nina Khemchyan will, with his pavilion, survey Armenia’s cultural heritage, showing how medieval objects retain their value centuries on. Two installations will fill the pavilion, as curated by Armen Yesayants: The Echo, a grouping of blue ceramic objects inscribed with words from Mesrop Mashtots, inventor of the Armenian alphabet, and Seven Deadly Sins, a 164-foot-long roll of paper.

Location: Magazzino del Sale no. 3, Dorsoduro 264

Australia

As Indigenous artists continue to gain greater visibility at the world’s big art festival, Archie Moore, a Kamilaroi and Bigambul artist based in Redlands, Queensland, will be presenting his installation at the Australia Pavilion in 2024. He will become the second-ever First Nations artist to do the country’s pavilion, after Tracey Moffatt in 2017. He’s expected to once again tackle issues related to Aboriginal history, as he often has in his work previously. The pavilion’s organizer is Ellie Buttrose, a curator of contemporary Australian art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane.

Location: Giardini

Austria

Anna Jermolaewa was commissioned to do the 2024 Austrian Pavilion, which will be curated by art historian Gabriele Spindler. Titled “A Language of Resistance,” Jermolaewa’s pavilion will take up the role that words play in protest. In addition to her work as an artist, Jermolaewa is known in Austria for being politically outspoken, talking often about her immigration from the Soviet Union to Austria in 1989. Her work previously figured in Harald Szeemann’s main exhibition at the 1999 Venice Biennale.

Location: Giardini

Azerbaijan

There will be no shortage of imagination on display at the Azerbaijani Pavilion, which asserts that artists much dare to dream in order to conjure new ways of living. Vusala Agharaziyeva will refer to sci-fi writings of the mid-20th century in paintings, sculptures, and digital art envisioning outer space. Rashad Alakbarov will present a new installation intended to function like maze trapping viewers in a city unlike any on this planet. And Irina Eldarova will show paintings taking up the oppression of women, whom she seeks to liberate. The pavilion, titled “From Caspian to Pink Planet: I Am Here,” is curated by Luca Beatrice and Amina Melikova.

Location: Campo della Tana, Castello 2126/A

Bangladesh

Information about the Bangladeshi Pavilion remains sparse. According to the Venice Biennale website, the pavilion will feature art by Abdur Rab, Syeda Mahbuba Karim, Shahjahan Ahmed Bikash, Shahid Kbir, Claudia De Leonardis, Anna Carla De Leonardis, Roberto Saglietto, Natalia Revoniuk, Patrizia Casagranda, DoJoong Jo, Jiyoon Oh, Franco Marrocco, Marco Nereo Rotelli, and Mirko Demattè. The pavilion, titled “The Contact,” will be organized by Viviana Vannucci.

Location: Spazio Espositivo Priuli Bon, Santa Croce 1979/A (San Stae)

Belgium

Simona Denicolai and Ivo Provoost will represent Belgium at this year’s Venice Biennale with a project that’s being called “Petticoat Government.” Curated by Antoinette Jattiot, their project “focuses on the pan-European mythical figures: the giants,” according to a cryptic release. The announcement continues, “With the support of multiple accomplices, the giants are set in motion in a new narrative. Through displacement and the nomadic spirit that drives travel, bodies shape space and the powers of identification and projection that surround them.”

Location: Giardini

Benin

In its Venice Biennale debut, Benin will be represented by a pavilion that aims to promote the country’s culture, broaching topics such as the importance of the Vodun religion, the scars left behind by the slave trade, and Gẹlẹdẹ, a Yoruba ritual that seeks to honor mother figures. In keeping with the latter, curator Azu Nwagbogu, who formerly led the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, South Africa, has promised a focus on feminist thought. Just one of the artists in the show, Romuald Hazoumè, is well-known beyond Africa, but the other three in this pavilion—Chloé Quenum, Moufouli Bello, and Ishola Akpo—are likely to rise in stature alongside him as a result of exhibiting in Venice.

Location: Arsenale

Bolivia

This year’s Bolivian Pavilion comes with a surprise twist: the show will be housed in the structure typically devoted to Russia, which this year bowed out of the Biennale for a second time in a row as its war with Ukraine continues on. (Ukraine, for the second time in a row, is participating; details on that pavilion follow below.) Why the Russian Pavilion? The official answer, according to the organizers of the Bolivian Pavilion, was that Russia “believed in the importance, quality, and contents of our project.” The unofficial answer, according to a number of journalists, may have something to do with the fact that Russia is trying to beat out China in the competition for Bolivia’s lithium resources.

As to the show itself, Bolivia will be represented by well over a dozen artists, a full list of which can be found on the Biennale website. And, in an unusual move, the pavilion is being curated not by a single person but an entity: the country’s culture ministry.

Location: Giardini

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Little is known about what Stjepan Skoko will produce for this pavilion, although it has been announced that it will be called “The Measure of the Sea.” Perhaps aptly, Sum Sova ran an image of Skoko installing the a sculpture whose parts resemble choppy waters. Curator Marin Ivanović has said that the work “emerged in an atmosphere of exploration.”

Location: Palazzo Zorzi, UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe (UNESCO Venice Office), Castello 4930

Brazil

This time around, the Brazilian Pavilion will be called the Hãhãwpuá Pavilion, its name a reference to the Pataxó word for the country before it was colonized by the Portuguese. Glicéria Tupinambá, a member of the Tupinambá people, will be the first Indigenous person to represent the country solo. In a presentation curated by Arissana Pataxó, Denilson Baniwa, and Gustavo Caboco Wapichana, she will focus on the capoiera, a bird native to the forests that the Tupinambá utilize—and that industrial companies seek to control. And while Glicéria, a well-known activist within Brazil, was initially picked to do a one-person show, her pavilion ended up becoming a collective endeavor, enlisting many other members of her community to contribute.

Location: Giardini

Bulgaria

The trio of artists representing Bulgaria—Krasimira Butseva, Julian Chehirian, and Lilia Topouzova—“convey the stories of people in Bulgaria who were persecuted by the government because of their perceived otherness,” according to Stir World. Vasil Vladimirov is set to curate their presentation, which takes the title “The Neighbours.”

Location: Sala Tiziano-Centro Culturale Don Orione Artigianelli, Fondamenta delle Zattere ai Gesuati 919

Cameroon

The Cameroonian Pavilion, one of the many this year by an African country, will this year take up the notion of who gets to be a prophet, proposing that in many cases, it is foreigners who have the potential to guide society forward. Some 13 artists are on tap for this presentation curated by Paul Emmanuel Loga Mahop and Sandro Orlandi Stagl; the full artist list is available on the Biennale website. While not a debut for Cameroon, which has before exhibited in Venice, the show does at least bill itself as the carbon net zero pavilion.

Location: Palazzo Donà delle Rose, Fondamente Nove, 5038

Canada

Two years after showing in the Biennale’s main exhibition, Kapwani Kiwanga will return to Venice as the artist for the Canadian Pavilion. Her research-oriented work has centered around cultural diplomacy, the transatlantic slave trade, and museums themselves; often, she looks at how seemingly banal objects open up histories of colonialism. What she will produce for the pavilion is not yet known. Gaëtane Verna, executive director of the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, will organize the pavilion, which has only ever been done by a Black artist one other time: Stan Douglas, in 2022.

Location: Giardini

Chile

Stockholm-based Valeria Montti Colque is the first Chilean artist from beyond Chile to represent the country at the Venice Biennale—a matter that was a sticking point for some during the selection process. But the pavilion, entitled “Cosmonación” and curated by Andrea Pacheco González, is intended as a commentary on the limitations of national identity, which Montti Colque seeks to undo. The pavilion’s biggest work will be Mamita Montaña, a 16-foot-tall installation meant as a refuge for all who are exiled.

Location: Magazzino no. 42, Marina Militare, Arsenale di Venezia, Fondamenta Case Nuove 2738/C

China

For the second year in a row, China’s pavilion derives its influence from a Chinese character: ji, which can mean “atlas,” the word that lends its name to the show. When used as a verb, it can also mean “to collect,” a translation that provides the title for one section of the show containing information about 100 historical Chinese paintings that have made their way beyond China. The other section, “Translate,” features work by Che Jianquan, Jiao Xingtao, Shi Hui, Qiu Zhenzhong, Wang Shaoqiang, Wang Zhenghong, and Zhu Jinshi, all of whom are contemporary artists that respond in their work to historical painting. Wang Xiaosong and Jiang Jun have organized the ambitious presentation.

Location: Arsenale

Croatia

Croatian-born artist Vlatka Horvat is typically based in London, but for her Venice Biennale pavilion, she will relocate herself to the Italian city for the entire show’s run. There, in her pavilion, she will showcase a continually growing selection of works by artists who live abroad, in some cases far from the nations from which they hail. Under the title “By the Means at Hand,” a reference to the unofficial systems émigrés create to ensure communication and the transportation of goods, Horvat’s show is set to include art that arrives in Venice by those very networks. Aptly, the show is organized by someone who lives outside Croatia, Antonia Majaca, who is based in Venice.

Location: Fàbrica 33 (Calle Larga dei Boteri, Cannaregio 5063)

Cuba

In 2001, Wilfredo Prieto achieved renown with Apolítico, a piece that includes a flag for every country in the United Nations, with grey in place of all the colors they typically contain. The project considered what it would mean to be totally neutral—to stay entirely out of a hot-button situation. He will continue to mull the notions of inclusion and exclusion with a new project for this pavilion called “Curtain,” which is being curated by Nelson Ramirez de Arellano.

Location: Teatro Fondamenta Nove, Cannaregio 5013

Cyprus

Cyprus has this time gone in a more theoretical direction with its pavilion, which will be titled “On a wildflower-lined gravel track off a quiet thoroughfare.” That pavilion will focus on the concept of “ghosting” across history, and will feature works by the duo LLC, the collective Endrosia, and Haig Aivazian, who did the Armenian Pavilion for the 2015 Venice Biennale. Unlike many other pavilions at the Biennale, this one does not have a single curator because its organizers sought to breakaway from the traditional divide between artists and curators.

Location: Associazione Culturale Spiazzi, Castello 3865

Czech Republic

“The Heart of a Giraffe in Captivity is Twelve Kilograms Lighter,” Eva Koťátková’s Czech Pavilion, is based around Lenka, the first giraffe ever brought to a Czech zoo. Having arrived from Kenya, Lenka was an outsider in her new Prague home, where many children ogled her daily. Koťátková’s pavilion will explore how kids relate to animals vis-à-vis Lenka. Under the aegis of curator Hana Janečková, she has brought on a cast of collaborators that includes artist and composer Himali Singh Soin, composer David Tappeser, and collectives for seniors, children, and decolonial thought.

Location: Giardini

Denmark

Inuuteq Storch will become the first Greenlandic artist and the first photographer to represent Denmark. Many of Storch’s works are devoted to expanding the concept of Greenlandic identity by turning his lens on people he knows and their surroundings, and by pondering the relationship between the two. Louise Wolthers, research manager and curator at the Hasselblad Foundation in Gothenburg, will organize the pavilion. In a statement, she said of Storch’s art, “His work, both with photographic archive material and his own motifs, clearly shows that he has a completely unique point of view, and I look forward to developing the exhibition together with him.”

Location: Giardini

Democratic Republic of Congo

As a Congolese workers’ collective takes over the Dutch Pavilion, a range of their compatriots will do their country’s own show, titled “LITHIUM.” Aimé Mpane, Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga, Eddy Ekete, Jean Katambayi Mukendi, Cédric Sungo, Steve Bandoma, and Eléonore Hellio and Michel Ekeba (of the collective Kongo Astronauts) are listed as the participants in the exhibition, to be curated by Michele Gervasuti and James Putnam.

Location: Gervasuti Foundation – Palazzo Canova, Calle longa Santa Caterina, Cannaregio 4998 – 5001/a

Egypt

On the biennial circuit, Wael Shawky has become a staple, showing his films reinterpreting political strife, often using puppets, at shows in Gwangju, Kassel, Sydney, and elsewhere. But his film for the Egyptian Pavilion, Drama 1882, marks a notable departure for Shawky in that includes none of these models. Instead, he has called the film “a moving painting, with the performers and soundtrack being elements in this composition.” The work will revisit the end of the Urabi revolt, which protested British intervention in Egypt, only for the European nation to quash the uprising and remain in power for more than half a century.

Location: Giardini

Estonia

Estonia became the first country to announce its plans for the 2024 Venice Biennale in December 2022, less than a month after that year’s edition closed. Edith Karlson, who has previously examined the relationship between humans and their environment, has been commissioned for the 2024 Estonian Pavilion, in a presentation organized by Maria Arusoo, director of Tallinn’s Estonian Center for Contemporary Art. “The world is a fuckup and we, humans, did it,” Karlson said in a statement. “There is no escaping from that situation. No illusions, only dramas. Nothing will ever change, and it’s both tragic and comic, serious and laughable, terrifying as hell and amusing as a circus. I think my job as an artist is to create spaces where the viewer’s fantasies are evoked because the most powerful dramas are in our heads.”

Location: Chiesa delle Penitenti, Fondamenta Cannaregio 890

Ethiopia

For its first-ever Venice Biennale participation, Ethiopia has chosen painter Tesfaye Urgessa, who makes cramped images in which figures of multiple races are pressed together. He’s said they’re reflections of his own immigrant experience, as an Ethiopian who studied art in Germany. (He returned to Addis Ababa in 2022, and has lived there since.) “I believe that this is the start of a new era for Ethiopian art, and I am excited to be part of it,” he said of his pavilion, curated by Lemn Sissay.

Location: Palazzo Bollani, Castello 3647

Finland

A trio of artists will represent Finland in 2024: Pia Lindman, Vidha Saumya, and Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen. Each artist’s practice varies widely. Lindman’s addresses what she’s called the “subsensorial,” Saumya focuses on ideas related to utopias, and Wallinheimo-Heimonen’s deals with disability politics. Together, the three will present work that shows how the personal and political are often intertwined. Yvonne Billimore and Jussi Koitela will curate the pavilion.

Location: Giardini

France

Julien Creuzet has been selected to represent France, marking the first time that a French-Caribbean artist has been chosen to do the pavilion. (Creuzet was born in Le Blanc Mesnil, France, and was raised in Martinique.) Known for his sculptures composed of tangled webs of thread, metal, and other objects, Creuzet pays homage to migrations of peoples to and from the Caribbean. Céline Kopp and Cindy Sissokho are set to curate his pavilion.

Location: Giardini

Georgia

If most pavilions are devoted to contemporary art, this one takes as its centerpiece Ilia Zdanevich and Max Ernst’s 1964 book 65 Maximiliana or the Illegal Practice of Astronomy, which ostensibly charted outer space, but did so without relying on scientific systems. Curators Julia Marchand and David Koroshinadze have brought on a group of artists active now to respond to it. Rodrigue De Ferluc and Juliette George will take up the book’s typography in new pieces of furniture, Nika Koplatadze will produce his own tomes in dialogue with Maximiliana, and Grigol Nodia will more broadly contend with its themes, showing a video about interplanetary travel. There will also be lithographs by 19th-century astronomer Wilhelm Ernst Tempel.

Location: Palazzo Palumbo Fossati, San Marco 2597

Germany

With the name “Thresholds,” the German Pavilion will feature works by Yael Bartana and Ersan Mondtag, with Çağla Ilk curating. Both artists are set to mull themes related to nationhood and trauma, with the former presenting a new piece presenting “a world on the brink of total destruction” and the latter showing an installation that will “revive past eras as living environments,” per the pavilion’s announcement. Sound ambitious? Consider the fact that the pavilion’s offerings extend beyond the structure itself, into the island of La Certosa, where works by Michael Akstaller, Nicole L’Huillier, Robert Lippok, and Jan St. Werner will be on view.

Locations: Giardini and Isola della Certosa

Great Britain

John Akomfrah, a pioneering filmmaker known for his expansive installations featuring crisscrossing narratives about globalism, colonialism, and racism, will represent Great Britain. What Akomfrah has on tap for 2024 is not yet known, although it’s worth noting that this isn’t his first time at the Venice Biennale—he previously showed at the main exhibition of the 2015 edition and in the 2017 Ghanaian Pavilion. “I see this invitation as recognition of, and a platform for all those I have collaborated with over the decades, and who continue to make my work possible,” Akomfrah said when the pavilion was announced. Tarini Malik will curate this pavilion, which is likely to be closely watched because Sonia Boyce’s Great Britain Pavilion took the Golden Lion award in 2022.

Greece

Perhaps it only makes sense that, in a city set on a lagoon, at least one pavilion would take on water itself. For Greece’s contribution, Thanasis Deligiannis and Yannis Michalopoulos conceived an installation featuring a piece of irrigation equipment, working with Elia Kalogianni, Yorgos Kyvernitis, Kostas Chaikalis, and Fotis Sagonas to realize the end result. This machinery will control the lighting of the pavilion, which is also set to include video and sound elements. For the artists, it’s a reference to cyclical happenings in Greece, most notably the panigyria festivals that take place in places such as Thessaly and the Xirómero region, for which this pavilion is named. Curator Panos Giannikopoulos is helping see the work into reality.

Location: Giardini

Grenada

Grenada, one of the few Caribbean nations with a recurring Venice Biennale pavilion, is set to explore the very concept of islands themselves. Quoting English poet John Donne and Martinican theorist Édouard Glissant, the pavilion’s announcement notes that 11 artists included all have a similar thought on their mind: “you are only who you are because you have encountered someone else.” A full list of the participants appears on the Biennale website; Daniele Radini Tedeschi will curate.

Location: Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello, Cannaregio 4118

Holy See

For a religious state, the Holy See has gone with the unexpected choice of Maurizio Cattelan, who has previously made one sculpture featuring the Pope felled by an asteroid and another featuring a tiny, penitent Hitler. What’s the Italian provocateur got up his sleeve this time? He’s set to show work at a women’s prison on the island of Giudecca. Inmates will be among Cattelan’s collaborators for this piece, which will appear outside the detention center. But the artist list for the pavilion mysteriously also includes more than a few famous names beyond Cattelan’s: sculptor Simone Fattal (an alumna of the 2022 Venice Biennale), Claire Fontaine (the collective that provided the name for the 2024 edition’s main exhibition), Corita Kent, Sonia Gomes, Claire Tabouret, and more. Chiara Parisi and Bruno Racine have curated the presentation.

Location: Casa di reclusione femminile Venezia, Giudecca – S. Eufemia, 712

Hong Kong

Because Hong Kong is not officially recognized by Italy as a country, it technically does not have a national pavilion. Still, Hong Kong stages its pavilion as a collateral event each year. This time, Trevor Yeung will represent Hong Kong, debuting a new body of work that refers to his fascination with aquariums, manmade environments meant to contain aquatic beings. But the tanks that Yeung, a rising star of the international art world, will present will not have any fish in them, despite working as they are meant to. Curator Olivia Chow is helming the presentation, which will feature 11 works.

Location: Campo della Tana, Castello 2126

Hungary

Márton Nemes, a young New York–based artist known for his abstractions formed from bold colors, was picked to represent Hungary with a project called “Superposed and Entangled.” Róna Kopeczky will organize the presentation.

Location: Giardini

Iceland

Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir, a Reykjavik-based artist, will represent Iceland at this Biennale. In her work, Birgisdóttir often plays on systems of classification and notions of beauty, in the process highlighting how objects are produced and distributed. Dan Byers, director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will curate her pavilion, the announcement for which noted that Ragnar Kjartansson, the artist who represented Iceland in 2009, had connected the two.

Location: Arsenale

Iran

Few details are available for Iran’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale, titled “Of One Essence Is the Human Race.” Per the Biennale website, Abdolhamid Ghadirian, Gholamali Taheri, Kazem Chalipa, Morteza Asadi, and Mostafa Goudarzi will show work in it, and Amir Abdolhoseini and Shoaib Hosseini Moghaddam will curate.

Location: Palazzo Malipiero, San Marco 3198

Ireland

Eimear Walshe is exceptionally young for an artist representing their respective home country, having turned 30 not long ago, yet their age does not betray their ambitions. Walshe’s pavilion will take up “gendered and sexual legacies related to the history of land and housing,” and will involve a number of collaborators, who were not named in the initial announcement. “My practice is deeply enriched by being embedded in Ireland, in a place, and with people, so beloved to me,” they said in a statement. “At the same time, my work emerges from the context of a nation in escalating crisis; this is the subject of my work.” They will work on the pavilion with Sarah Greavu, curator of visual arts at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin.

Location: Giardini

Israel*

While some countries cancel their pavilions once conflicts begin, Israel’s representatives were clear that their nation would have a show, even in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack and amid the war in Gaza. Ruth Patir, an artist known for films that use computer-generated imagery to consider gender norms, is set to do the show, titled “(M)otherland,” with Mira Lapidot and Tamar Margalit curating. But, in the run-up to the Biennale, the actual contents of the pavilion itself became lost in an outcry over Israel’s presence at the exhibition altogether. Thousands of artists, including some showing in Adriano Pedrosa’s main show, signed an open letter that called the pavilion “genocidal” and urged the Biennale to reconsider its inclusion. Afterward, high-ranking Italian officials said Israel’s pavilion would remain.

Just before the Biennale opened, Israel’s representatives posted a sign to the pavilion saying that the exhibition would not open until a ceasefire and a hostage release agreement were accomplished.

Location: Giardini

Italy

There may not be much to see this year in the Italian Pavilion, one of the biggest structures of its kind at the Venice Biennale. That’s because Massimo Bartolini, the artist representing the country, is devising a show that’s sound-heavy, with much to be heard and little to be viewed in the largely empty space. This is, in some ways, the point: Barotlini has said the pavilion is about the value of hearing what others have to say. Accordingly, he encourages viewers to listen hard instead of looking. Curator Luca Cerizza is organizing the pavilion.

Location: Arsenale

Ivory Coast

Simon Njami, one of the top curators of African art, has been tapped to organize this pavilion, few details for which have been announced. It will feature works by Jems Koko Bi, François Xavier Gbré,Sadikou Oukpedjo, Franck Abd-Bakar Fanny, and Marie Claire Messouma.

Location: Centro Culturale Don Orione Artigianelli – Dorsoduro 947

Japan

Yuko Mohri has been lining up biennial appearances in recent years, participating in the 2021 Bienal de São Paulo, the 2022 Biennale of Sydney, and the 2023 Gwangju Biennale, and she will now represent Japan at the 2024 Venice Biennale. Inspired in part by the pandemic and recent climate protests held at art museums, Mohri will create a pavilion that will explore “how a crisis, paradoxically, sparks the highest levels of creativity in people.” Past works by her have taken the form of installations composed of junk-like elements. Details for her latest piece—curated by Sook-Kyung Lee, who also organized the most recent Gwangju Biennale in which Mohri showed her art—have not yet been announced.

Location: Giardini

Kazakhstan

A mythical land known as Jerūiyq will form the basis for this pavilion featuring works by Kamil Mulashev, Saken Narynov, Yerbolat Tolepbay, Sergey Maslov, Anvar Musrepov, and The2vvo. Danagul Tolepbay and Anvar Musrepov will curate.

Location: Museo Storico Navale, Riva S. Biasio Castello, 2148

Korea

Most pavilions at the Venice Biennale merely offer visual experiences, but the Korean Pavilion at the 2024 edition will go one step further, engaging viewers’ noses as well. Koo Jeong A has been tapped to create a pavilion under the theme “Korea Scent Journey,” which will include works known as “Odorama cities” that feature “scents and temperatures, drawing a national portrait of Korea,” according to the Korea Herald. For the first time, two curators will share the duty of acting as artistic director for the pavilion, with Jacob Fabricius and Seolhui Lee, artistic director of Art Hub Copenhagen and a curator at the Kunsthal Aarhus, respectively, set to curate.

Location: Giardini

Kosovo

Doruntina Kastrati has for her Kosovar Pavilion take as her influence the experiences of her mother, who worked at a factory in Kastrati’s hometown of Prizren that produced Turkish delights. The physical labor required to craft those treats en masse takes its toll on the body, and the exploitation her mother and other women suffered forms the basis for a new series of sculptures that resemble the walnuts used in Turkish delights and the surgical implants some workers get after processing them. With curator Erëmirë Krasniq, Kastrati has collected oral histories from factory workers as a guide for her sculptures, which contain sound elements.

Location: Museo Storico Navale della Marina Militare Riva S. Biasio, 2148

Latvia

The young painter Amanda Ziemele will produce a new series for the Latvian Pavilion under the title “O day and night, but this is wondrous strange. And therefore as a stranger give it welcome,” a quotation from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. What Ziemele will produce has remained cryptic in the run-up to the Biennale—a release refers to her contribution as a “living organism” and a “queer ecology.” Adam Budak will curate.

Location: Arsenale

Lebanon

Mounira Al Solh has appeared in a range of recent biennials, from Documenta to the Sharjah Biennial, and is set here to once again reaffirm her centrality to these shows with her Lebanese Pavilion. Details about the pavilion itself remain sparse, but in the past, she has addressed conflicts in the Middle East through painting, performance, and other mediums. Nada Ghandour will curate her presentation.

Location: Arsenale

Lithuania

A minor celebrity of the biennial circuit, with appearances in major exhibitions held in Berlin, Moscow, Liverpool, and elsewhere, the duo Pakui Hardware will add another big recurring show to its CV with the 2024 Lithuanian Pavilion. Their pavilion will take up the notion of “inflammation,” both as it pertains to human bodies and to our planet, and will also include work by the modernist artist Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė, who is considered key in Lithuanian art history. Valentinas Klimašauskas and João Laia will curate.

Location: Chiesa di Sant’Antonin, Salizada S. Antonin, 3477

Luxembourg

While most pavilions tend toward painting and sculpture, this one will be predominantly focused on sound. Andrea Mancini and the Every Island collective have amassed a library of sounds that they will then play to their liking via a wall-like structure outfitted with a loudspeaker. Curator Joel Valabrega is organizing the show, which will include performances staged throughout the Biennale’s run. Notably, the performances will be performed by Mancini and the collective’s individual artists separately, meaning that while their sounds will meld together, they are unlikely to produce art together in person at this pavilion.

Location: Arsenale

Malta

Hot off unveiling a brand-new biennial, Malta will return to the Venice Biennale with a pavilion by Matthew Attard, who will here consider ship graffiti—the etchings in stone chapels—that appear throughout the country where he was born. He is set to rely on digital technology to bring these markings to life in a presentation curated by Elyse Donna and Sara Dolfi Agostini. Together, the three are the youngest members ever to represent Malta at the Biennale.

Location: Arsenale

Mexico

While Erick Meyenberg is representing Mexico, he’s set to also involve elements made in Japan for his pavilion, “Things We Do for Love.” A central film installation in the pavilion, curated by Tania Ragasol Valenzuela, will take up the concept of Japanese art of kintsugi, whereby shattered pottery is pieced back together again. Accordingly, Meyenberg will incorporate fragments of film produced in Japan. He is also set to show new ceramic works.

Location: Arsenale

Mongolia

Ochirbold Ayurzana has reached into Buddhist lore for his Mongolian Pavilion, which centers around the god Citipati. While in the past Citipati has been seen as a guardian of the environment, Orchirbold also asserts that the deity may be in control of climate change and digital technology as well. His sculptures, curated by Oyuntuya Oyunjarga and Gregor Jansen, will consider Citipati’s shifting modes of consciousness.

Location: Arsenale Castello 2127A, Campo della Tana

Montenegro

Montenegro’s Mamula island has been through quite a few transformations: it acted as a fortress for the Austro-Hungarian empire, became a concentration camp while under the control of fascist Italy, and is today visitable as a luxury resort. Darja Bajagić, a young provocateur known for art contending with misogyny and other insidious forces, has been studying this island intently for several years, and will here debut new work about it. Ana Simona Zelenović will curate the pavilion, which will feature five paintings and one sculpture.

Location: Ospedaletto, Castello 6691, Barbaria delle Tole

The Netherlands

After last year handing off its space to Estonia, the Netherlands is for this edition reclaiming its pavilion in the Giardini. It’s set to spotlight the Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs Plantation Congolaise and Dutch artist Renzo Martens, with whom the group has long collaborated. Much of their work together has involved the production of art objects, often using cacao from plantations around the world, that are then sold, with the funds being redistributed to initiatives in the Democratic Republic of Congo. While efforts like these have been intended as decolonial gestures, Martens’s involvement has periodically raised controversy. Unusually for a national pavilion at the Venice Biennale, this presentation will also be staged at the White Cube, the art space founded by CATPC in Lusanga. Hicham Khalidi, director of the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, will curate the Dutch Pavilion.

Location: Giardini

Nigeria

For only the second time ever, Nigeria will have a national pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The 2024 pavilion, curated by Museum of West African Art contemporary and modern art curator Aindrea Emelife, will be a cross-generational exhibition called “Nigeria Imaginary.” The eight artists showing in it are Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Ndidi Dike, Onyeka Igwe, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Abraham Oghobase, Precious Okoyomon, Yinka Shonibare, and Fatimah Tuggar.

Location: Palazzo Canal, Rio Terà Canal, Dorsoduro 3121

Nordic Countries Pavilion

The Nordic Countries Pavilion has in the past cycled between Sweden, Finland, and Norway, but in the past few editions of the Biennale, artists representative of all three countries have shown there at the same time. That will happen once again in 2024, where the pavilion will play host to what the Moderna Museet, the Stockholm-based museum organizing it, called a “joint Nordic Gesamtkunstwerk.” (Norway’s OCA and Finland’s Kiasma are collaborating with the Moderna Museet on the pavilion.) Lap-See Lam, a Swedish artist currently having a moment in the US, with shows at the Swiss Institute and the Buffalo AKG Art Museum this summer, has been invited to do the project’s framework; she will work with Finnish artist Kholod Hawash and Norwegian composer Tze Yeung Ho to create a work influenced by Cantonese opera. Asrin Haidari, curator of Swedish and Norwegian art at the Moderna Museet, will curate the Gesamkunstwerk.

Location: Giardini

North Macedonia

Questions of difference proliferate at this year’s Venice Biennale, whose main exhibition, “Foreigners Everywhere,” gets at what it means to be an other. For the North Macedonian Pavilion, Slavica Janešlieva will invoke similar themes with a presentation of sculptural works composed of mirrors, feathers, and more, all intended to incite forms of empathy in their viewers. Ana Frangovska, the pavilion’s curator, has written that the artist “challenges us with acceptance or non-acceptance of the distinct labels from the ones familiar and ordinary to the masses; encompassing differences based on gender, sexual orientation, appearance, demeanor, attitude, illness, nationality, religion, language, political orientation.”

Location: Scuola dei Laneri, Santa Croce 131/a

Oman

In 2017, Alia Al Farsi made history as the first Omani artist to show at the Venice Biennale. For the second-ever Omani Pavilion, Al Farsi will be on hand to curate works by five artists from the country: herself, Ali al Jabri, Essa al Mufarji, Adham al Farsi, and Sarah al Olaqi. Though each artist produces vastly different kinds of work, Al Farsi told the National that they were all bound by “effectively revitalising the contemporary art scene” in Oman.

Location: Palazzo Navagero Castello 4147

Panama

Panama, participating in the Venice Biennale for the first time, has gone the thematic route, bringing together four artists under the title “Traces: on the body and the land.” Those artists are Brooke Alfaro, Isabel De Obaldía, Cisco Merel, and Giana De Dier, with Ana Elizabeth Gonzalez and Monica Kupfer curating.

Location: Spazio Castello 2131

Peru

Roberto Huarcaya, an artist who has in the past made photographs about the damage done to the Amazon via deforestation and pollution, will represent Peru this time around, in a presentation curated by Alejandro León Cannock. Typically, pavilion announcements are greeted with excitement by their respective nations. But Peru’s became the subject of controversy after some said an Indigenous artist should have been chosen instead to fit the main exhibition’s theme. In an interview with El País, Huarcaya said he respected those criticisms, but defended his pavilion, saying that it was “not a requirement” for an Indigenous artist to be selected. He also said his pavilion would include a sculpture by Antonio Pareja, an artist of Ayacucho descent, but the Biennale’s website does not list Pareja’s name in its entry for the Peruvian Pavilion.

Location: Arsenale

The Philippines

Mark Salvatus, the artist representing the Philippines this year, pointed out in a recent interview that the the capital city of Manila, where he is based, has sometimes been labeled “the Venice of the East.” Now, in the Italian city, he is set to exhibit new works that deal with Mt. Banahaw and Lucban, where Salvatus was born. In a show curated by Carlos Quijon, Jr., he will focus specifically on how the people of Lucban fought back against Spanish colonizers’ attempts to change their ways, particularly when it came to religion.

Location: Arsenale

Poland

The Polish Pavilion underwent a big change at the end of 2023 when, amid a regime change in the country, the initial plan for a pavilion by artist Ignacy Czwartos was nixed. Czwartos’s proposed contribution was to feature a work setting German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin beside a swastika. Some observers called that pavilion “anti-European.” Ultimately, it was replaced by one for the Ukrainian collective the Open Group, whose exhibition will feature two videos featuring Ukrainian refugees who tell of the horrors they have witnessed. (The pavilion is curated by Marta Czyż.) The videos may look like karaoke, with subtitles that can be read aloud, but in place of the music typically heard alongside those words, there are only the sounds of war. Czwartos, not content with the decision, has promised to stage a rival pavilion in Venice even as the Open Group’s is inaugurated.

Location: Giardini

Portugal

Mónica de Miranda, Sónia Vaz Borges, and Vânia Gala have for their Portuguese Pavilion drawn inspiration from Creole gardens, sites seen throughout French Guinea, the West Indies, and Réunion that are known for containing a particularly diverse set of flora because of the ways they are configured. The artists, seeking to create their own Creole garden of a sort, have created an exhibition that, per an announcement, can also perform triple duty as a show of sculptures, a school, and a stage. It promises to be among the more untraditional pavilions staged in Venice this year, and to that end, in a further unusual move, the artists have served as curators of their own pavilion.

Location: Palazzo Franchetti, San Marco 2842

Romania

Șerban Savu, the artist representing Romania this year, will present an arrangement of around 40 paintings that contend with the concept of work and its obverse, rest. They’re done in a style intended to recall Socialist mosaics, with naturalistic images of laborers in factories, but whereas those images tended to encourage productivity, Savu’s work features his workers relaxing. For him, their unwillingness to toil constantly is a protest of a sort. Meanwhile, Atelier Brenda will create an installation that an announcement describes as “non-ideological propaganda” in response to Savu’s paintings. Ciprian Mureșan will curate the pavilion, which expands beyond the Giardini to include events staged elsewhere.

Locations: Giardini and New Gallery of Istituto Romeno di Cultura e Ricerca Umanistica (Palazzo Correr, Campo Santa Fosca, Cannaregio 2214)

San Marino

“Nomader” is the term that San Marino representative Eddie Martinez uses to describe his painting practice, a terminology that dovetails neatly with the main exhibition’s emphasis on foreigners and migration. Here, Martinez will show more of the paintings for which he is best known—semi-abstract arrangements of figures clustered together—plus drawings and sculptures. Alison M. Gingeras is curating the pavilion.

Location: Fucina del futuro, Castello 5063B, calle San Lorenzo

Saudi Arabia

In the run-up to her Saudi Pavilion, artist Manal AlDowayan led workshops with women in her home country in which women were invited to reflect on how they were portrayed in global media. The music, texts, and drawings they produced will be shown as part of this pavilion, titled “Shifting Sands: A Battle Song” and curated by Jessica Cerasi and Maya El Khalil. AlDowayan has said the pavilion is “a call for solidarity in the context of the global representation of women in and from Saudi Arabia, and a rally to take ownership of our identity as we navigate both the physical space we inhabit and the narratives that have historically defined us.”

Location: Arsenale

Senegal

In its debut at the Venice Biennale, Senegal will be showing works by Alioune Diagne, a painter known for works made of disparate strokes that coalesce to form images of people in transit and at play when seen from afar. In tribute to the unusual way his paintings function, he’s called his style “figuro-abstract.” Massamba Mbaye will curate the pavilion, titled “Bokk – Bound,” with the former word translating from the Wolof to mean “what is shared” or “held in common.”

Location: Arsenale

Serbia

Aleksandar Denic, a Serb by birth, was displaced to Germany, and is still based there today. His feelings of alienation will inform his pavilion, described in a release as an “exploration of the contemporary ramifications of colonialism, and the ongoing impact of the division and subjugation of peoples and cultures.” Ksenija Samardzija will curate the pavilion.

Location: Giardini

Seychelles

The Seychelles will this year be represented by Jude Ally, Ryan Chetty, Danielle Freakley, and Juliette Zelime, who will present new works in a show called “Lost and Found.” Martin Kennedy will curate.

Location: Arsenale

Singapore

This pavilion’s artist and curator will be familiar to those who frequent international biennials. Robert Zhao Renhui, the artist representing Singapore this time around, has featured in an array of biennials held in the Asia-Pacific region, from the Biennale of Sydney to the Singapore Biennale, and will now debut a new immersive installation with ties to his past work, which has taken up Anthropocene, regrowth, and forests. Haeju Kim, his pavilion’s curator, previously organized the 2022 Busan Biennale; she is now senior curator at the Singapore Art Museum, the pavilion’s commissioning institution.

Location: Arsenale

Slovakia

Technically, the Slovak Pavilion is not a structure in its own right, because it will appear on top of the structure shared by the country and the Czech Republic. Oto Hudec is set to paint trees onto the pavilion, creating the exhibition’s titular “Floating Arboretum.” There will also be a sculpture of a seed, audio elements, and a performance, all in a call to save the environment. Lýdia Pribišová will curate.

Location: Giardini

Slovenia

For her Slovenian Pavilion, artist Nika Špan will envision Venice as “an object alien to itself, alienating as a consequence the experience of everyone who encounters it,” according to a release. Certainly, the city has some unusual qualities—the fact that it technically floats, for one, but the alien quality Špan and curator Vladimir Vidmar are most interested in is its centrality to the art world itself. Few details have been announced about the work itself, which will be shown under the intriguing-sounding name “Garden Secret for You.”

Location: Serra dei Giardini di Castello, Via Garibaldi 1254

South Africa

The two-person group MADEYOULOOK (composed of Molemo Moiloa and Nare Mokgotho) will represent South Africa with a sound installation called Dinokana, a town in the country that refused to comply with an Apartheid-era rule that Hurutshe women had to carry documentation on them. In keeping with that history, the pavilion will mull notions about land ownership and the roles that power and protest play in it. Portia Malatjie will curate.

Location: Arsenale

Spain

Spain this time went with a Peru-born artist for its pavilion: Sandra Gamarra, whose artistic activities include more than just making objects. Gamarra is best known for running the LiMac – Museum of Contemporary Art of Lima, a semi-fictional, itinerant institution that was founded in Lima in 2002. Its collection is composed of historical and contemporary artworks, as well as pre-Columbian artifacts. Gamarra has also produced more conventional artworks, such as paintings meditating on the connection between art and mystical experiences. Her pavilion will be organized by curator Agustín Pérez Rubio.

Location: Giardini

Switzerland

The young Swiss-Brazilian artist Guerreiro do Divino Amor has few solo shows to his name, and that makes his Swiss Pavilion all the more intriguing. For his pavilion curated by Andrea Bellini, the leader of the Centre d’Art Contemporain and the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement in Geneva, the artist will offer up a presentation that’s called “Super Superior Civilizations.” Its subject will be “the diverse entanglements of our globalized existence that have been impacted by aspects such as postcolonial distortion.”

Location: Giardini

Taiwan

As is often the case for national pavilions, Taiwan is devoting its presentation to a beloved artist: Yuan Goang-ming, whose conceptual works and video installations about globalization are famous within the country. His new work for the pavilion will deal with “‘politics of cartography’, ‘wars in everyday life’, and ‘the everyday in wars’, questioning issues of dwelling in relation to contemporary living situations,” according to a statement provided by Yuan. Abby Chen, a curator at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum who will organize the pavilion, said that Yuan’s latest project will “explore time as a changing habitat, normalcy as a form of resistance, in another year of great uncertainty and division.”

Tanzania

The four artists representing Tanzania, a first-time participant at the Biennale, will each be given a room of their own. Lutengano Mwakisopile and Happy Robert will show about migrations to and from the West, meditating on colonialism and diaspora, respectively. Meanwhile, Haji Chilonga and Naby will explore the future of Tanzania, viewing the years to come in divergent ways. Curator Enrico Bittoto writes, “The exhibited works, paintings, woodcuts, and site-specific installations, engage with themes of travel, migration in opposite directions (colonisation versus economic emigration), the inevitability of human and animal nomadism guided by feelings or needs, and the transformations imposed on individuals by environmental changes.”

Location: La Fabbrica del Vedere, Calle del Forno 3857

Timor-Leste

Also making its Venice Biennale premiere is Timor-Leste, the small South Asian island nation represented here by Maria Madeira, who will produce a site-specific work called Kiss and Don’t Tell. During the Biennale’s opening days, Madeira kiss the structure’s walls, all the while intoning songs in the Indigenous Tetun language. At least one of the songs will be addressed to Mother Earth, a reference to the endurance of female forces all around us. Natalie King, who organized the 2022 pavilion for New Zealand (which will not return in 2024), has come back to Venice to curate this pavilion.

Location: Spazio Ravà, San Polo 1100

Turkey

Gülsün Karamustafa, an acclaimed artist whose installations have tackled issues such as immigration and modernization in Turkey, will represent the country at this Venice Biennale. Here, she will present new sculptures formed from found objects that she says will attest to a “state of a world hollowed out to the core by wars, earthquakes, migration and nuclear peril unleashed at every turn, threatening humankind while nature is ceaselessly scathed and the environment made sick.” Esra Sarıgedik Öktem, who runs a management office for Turkish artists called BüroSarıgedik, which represents Karamustafa, was initially slated to curate the pavilion, but bailed out as people pointed out possible conflicts of interest.

Location: Arsenale

Uganda

In 2022, at the first-ever Ugandan Pavilion, Acaye Kerunen turned heads with her elegant arrays of raffia; they were likely one reason the Biennale’s jury awarded that exhibition a special mention. Here, she will return, this time as a curator. She’s organized a far-reaching group exhibition that intends to act as a snapshot of the Ugandan scene as its stands right now. Among the artists showing there is the 26-person Artisan Weavers’ Collective.

Location: Bragora Gallery, Castello 3496

Ukraine

Last year’s Ukrainian Pavilion was a hard-won effort, with the curator transporting the artwork within it out of the war-torn country using her car. With Russia’s war in Ukraine continuing on, there is no doubt that things were difficult this time for curators Viktoria Bavykina and Max Gorbatskyi and the six artists they’ve chosen, all of whom have focused on the value of collectivity and camouflage during times of conflict. Those artists are Katya Buchatska, Andrii Dostliev, Lia Dostlieva, Daniil Revkovskyi, Andrii Rachynskyi, and Oleksandr Burlaka.

Location: Arsenale

United Arab Emirates

Abdullah Al Saadi, the artist representing the United Arab Emirates this year, is considered a pioneer of conceptual art in his home country, where he is famed for his works in which he goes on self-guided odysseys, the only evidence of which now remains in the form of documentation and objects he produced along the way. Typically, he travels into nature, where he paints, draws, and writes; he’ll present eight artworks resulting from those journeys. But rather than hanging them on a wall, he’ll present them in metal chests, which he has indexed according to his own systems. Tarek Abou ElFetouh will curate.

Location: Arsenale

United States

Jeffrey Gibson, a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and who is also of Cherokee descent, will represent the United States, marking the first time that the pavilion has been done by an Indigenous artist working solo. It will also get its first-ever Indigenous curator, the Portland Art Museum’s Kathleen Ash-Milby, who will work with Abigail Winograd on it. They commissioned the pavilion with Louis Grachos, director of SITE Santa Fe, which organized the presentation with the Portland Art Museum.

Location: Giardini

Uruguay

Few details have been announced for the Uruguayan Pavilion. Eduardo Carrozo will represent the country in a presentation titled “LATENT” and curated by Elisa Valerio.

Location: Giardini

Uzbekistan

For this pavilion, Aziza Kadyri will meditate on the status of Central Asian women, situating viewers within their experience via artworks that allude to their migratory paths and traditions. She will enlist textiles and costumes that reference Uzbek traditions, and is set to specifically focus on the embroidery style known as suzane, which she will have AI revise and edit. Rather than an individual, the pavilion will be curated by an institution: the Center for Contemporary Art in Tashkent.

Location: Arsenale

Venezuela

Few details have been announced for the Venezuelan Pavilion this year. Per the Biennale website, artist Juvenal Ravelo will represent the country in a pavilion curated by Edgar Ernesto Gonzalez.

Location: Giardini

Zimbabwe

A sextet of artists will represent Zimbabwe this time around, in a pavilion called “Undone”: Gillian Rosselli, Kombo Chapfika, Moffat Takadiwa, Sekai Machache, Troy Makaza, and Victor Nyakauru. Fadzai Veronica Muchemwa will curate.

Location: Santa Maria della Pietà, Castello 3701