Biennale Arte, the artists have arrived in Venice: what happens to the Russian pavilion

Russian Pavilion will not be accessible to the public

Among the one hundred countries participating in the 2026 Art Biennale, the Russian pavilion will however be the only one not to be accessible to the public for the entire duration of the event (9 May – 22 November, according to the official programme). There will be no inaugural ceremony on the opening day: the space will not be physically open to visitors, a condition that makes it unique in the current edition.

Also at the center of the discussions is the performance ‘The Tree is Rooted in the Sky’, scheduled during the Vernice from 6 to 8 May. The event, still being defined, is conceived as an artistic and performative action lasting three days, but can only be followed by journalists and professionals. The recording of the performance should then be projected on screens installed on the facade of the pavilion, so as to make it visible also to visitors who pass near the exhibition area in the Giardini.

According to rumors collected by Adnkronos, the project would involve around thirty participants including artists, musicians, poets and philosophers, with an international component that includes, in addition to Russian figures, also professionals from Argentina, Brazil, Mali and Mexico. Among the names mentioned there is also DJ Diaki, a Malian sound artist known for the fusion of electronic music, African traditions and folk suggestions. The structure of the initiative is conceived as a sort of performative festival, which would include musical moments, workshops and philosophical interventions, with the declared aim of encouraging intercultural dialogue and contamination between different and often peripheral artistic practices compared to large cultural centres.

The names of the artists present

Inside the pavilion should, in addition, be presented works of painting, sculpture, multimedia installations and sound art by a large group of international artists, including Lizaveta Anshina, Ekaterina Antonenko, Vera Bazilevskikh, Antonio Buonuario, Serafim Chaikin, Marco Dinelli, Timofey Dudarenko, Faina, Zhanna Gefling, Oleg Gudachev, Sofya Ivanishkina, Jaijiu, JLZ, Tatiana Khalbaeva, Alexey Khovalyg, Daria Khrisanova, Nikita Korolev, Oksana Kuznetsova, Roman Malyavkin, Petr Musoev, Artem Nikolaev, Veronika Okuneva, Valerie Oleynik, Georgy Orlov-Davydovsky, Yaroslav Paradovsky, Bogdan Petrenko, Alexey Retinsky, Ekaterina Rostovtseva, Antonina Sergeeva, Mikhail Spasskii, Lukas Sukharev, Alexey Sysoev, Olga Talysheva, Ilya Tatakov, Alexey Tegin e Maria Vinogradova.

Guiding the project, according to what was declared by the commissioner of the pavilion Anastasia Karneeva, is the intention to build a space for comparison between different cultures, connecting local roots and global perspectives through heterogeneous artistic languages.