The 2026 edition of the Venice Biennale has opened with a mix of controversy, political debate and large-scale experimental installations, as artists across Venice use performance, sound, sculpture and archival work to address themes ranging from war and surveillance to technology and public memory.

Spread across the Giardini, Arsenale and dozens of satellite venues, this year’s biennale has drawn attention not only for its official exhibitions but also for the reactions they have provoked from governments, visitors and even local police.Among the most discussed works is the Austrian pavilion by Florentina Holzinger, whose immersive performance installation transformed the national pavilion into a chaotic post-apocalyptic environment.

The performance opened with Holzinger suspended upside down from the clappers of a large bell while performers moved through the space naked. One woman repeatedly drove a speedboat in circles inside the pavilion, while others balanced high above visitors or remained submerged in water tanks.The installation also incorporated functioning toilets connected to a filtration system intended to purify visitors’ urine and redirect it into a large water tank.

Nearby sections of the exhibition appeared deliberately engineered to resemble flooding or sewage failure, creating an atmosphere of collapse and instability. During one viewing, police officers entered the pavilion to question the nature of the performance after complaints or confusion from attendees.

The Austrian pavilion quickly became one of the central talking points of the biennale’s opening week, reinforcing Holzinger’s reputation for physically extreme and confrontational live art.Elsewhere in Venice, painter Sanya Kantarovsky presented “Basic Failure” inside the historic Palazzo Loredan.

Kantarovsky, born in Moscow before emigrating to the United States as a child, filled the palazzo’s ornate interiors with psychologically tense paintings that resemble still frames from unresolved narratives.

The exhibition pairs unsettling domestic imagery with the grandeur of Venetian interiors lined with books and Murano glass chandeliers. The show culminates in a detailed Murano glass sculpture of a young boy’s head, creating what visitors described as a dialogue between contemporary anxiety and historical opulence.

Political tensions surrounding this year’s biennale were particularly visible in the case of South African artist Gabrielle Goliath. Goliath had originally been expected to participate officially before South African authorities blocked the presentation of her work “Elegy”, describing it as divisive because it referenced a Palestinian poet.Despite the decision, Goliath proceeded with an independent presentation at the Chiesa di Sant’Antonin in collaboration with arts organisation Ibraaz.

The performance features classically trained female vocalists sustaining single notes until their voices fade before being replaced by another performer.Originally conceived in 2015, the work functions as a ritual mourning piece dedicated to women killed through racialised and sexualised violence. Visitors described the installation as one of the most emotionally direct works outside the biennale’s central exhibition.

At the Arsenale, American artist Carrie Schneider contributed one of the most visually expansive works in the main exhibition “In Minor Keys.” Schneider’s installation stretches across approximately 1.5 kilometres of photographic material derived from repeated stills of La Jetée by Chris Marker.The scale of the installation stood out inside the industrial spaces of the Arsenale, where several works struggled to compete with the architecture’s vast dimensions.

Other notable contributions included photographic archives from Francophone Africa by Akinbode Akinbiyi and documentary material addressing destruction and displacement in Gaza.British-Algerian artist Lydia Ourahmane presented one of the quieter but widely praised exhibitions at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation. Her project “5 Works” incorporates materials and labour drawn entirely from Venice itself.

The installation includes a newly constructed wooden pier intended for future public use, a curtain made of Murano glass beads assembled by inmates from the Giudecca women’s prison, and a modified church lighting mechanism activated through the insertion of a one-euro coin.Questions surrounding surveillance and state power appear prominently in “Canicula,” a film exhibition at the Complesso dell’Ospedaletto.

Lebanese-British artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan contributed “450XL: the Story of a Fugitive Sound,” an investigation into allegations that Serbian authorities used sonic devices to disperse peaceful anti-government demonstrators.Installed inside the former hospital’s historic music room, the work combines witness testimony, sound analysis and multi-screen projections arranged like protest placards.

The war in Ukraine also remains a major presence at the biennale. The Ukrainian pavilion features a large concrete deer sculpture by Zhanna Kadyrova that was transported from Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine after difficult evacuation efforts during the conflict.Video footage documents the sculpture’s journey through Europe as refugees from Pokrovsk encounter the work in transit. Pokrovsk is now under Russian military control, giving the installation additional political and emotional weight.

Technology and artificial intelligence appear prominently inside the Chinese pavilion at the Arsenale, where artists explored the relationship between machines and creativity. Works include robotic calligraphy, digitally generated landscapes and interactive installations inspired by Chinese mythology and gaming culture.

One of the final installations in the pavilion is a field of “digital chairs” by Chinese designer Zhang Zhoujie, offering visitors a place to rest after navigating the biennale’s large-scale exhibitions.Away from official installations, one of the unexpected attractions of the opening week emerged outside the Polish pavilion, where a nesting gull drew crowds of confused visitors unsure whether the bird itself formed part of an artwork.

The gull, enclosed behind a temporary white fence, quickly became an informal symbol of the biennale’s blend of performance, ambiguity and public spectacle.

A concrete deer sculpture created for a public park in eastern Ukraine has become one of the central works of Ukraine’s national pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale, carrying with it the story of war, displacement and the destruction of cultural landscapes during Russia’s invasion.

The sculpture, created by Kyiv-based artist Zhanna Kadyrova, began its journey in Pokrovsk, a city in Ukraine’s Donetsk region that has since become engulfed by frontline fighting. Originally commissioned in 2018 as part of a public park regeneration project, the work was designed to replace a decommissioned Soviet Su-7 fighter-bomber that had stood on a plinth in the park as a military monument.

Kadyrova said the idea was to create something accessible and peaceful for residents rather than another symbol of force. The artist submerged most of the old plinth in soil and turf and placed the geometric deer on top, designed with sharp folded lines resembling origami.

Cast in concrete, the sculpture created a visual contrast between fragility and permanence.“It wasn’t something too conceptual,” Kadyrova said during the sculpture’s recent stop in Paris at the headquarters of UNESCO.

“I wanted to make something for local people that they would love, something understandable, something contemporary.”Over time, the deer became a recognized landmark in Pokrovsk, a city that had already been living under the shadow of conflict following the seizure of parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions by Russian-backed separatists in 2014.

By mid-2024, however, Pokrovsk had moved closer to the center of active combat as Russia’s full-scale invasion intensified pressure across eastern Ukraine. According to Leonid Marushchak, a historian, educator and now co-curator of Ukraine’s pavilion in Venice, the city was rapidly emptying as artillery and drone attacks increased.

Marushchak was coordinating emergency evacuations of museum collections and cultural objects from frontline areas when he noticed the deer still standing in the park.“I saw the deer was still there and called Zhanna to ask if she agreed to evacuate it,” he said.

“The museum staff understood it had to be moved, but they had no practical way to do it.”Securing permission from local authorities proved difficult as civilian evacuation and military priorities dominated the city administration. Marushchak said he also proposed relocating a statue of Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych, known internationally for composing “Carol of the Bells,” to strengthen the case for action.

Permission was eventually granted. On Aug. 30, 2024, workers used angle grinders, drills, a crane and a flat-bed truck to detach the deer, which had been cast directly onto the structure, and move it out of the city.The removal was documented on film, which will also be shown at the Venice Biennale.

In interviews recorded during the evacuation, local residents described the park as one of the few remaining reminders of normal life before the war. Some residents preparing to leave permanently said they came to take final photographs of the site.At the time of writing, fighting continues around Pokrovsk, with large parts of the surrounding area heavily damaged.

Organizers of the Ukrainian pavilion say the sculpture may be one of the last surviving physical symbols of the city’s former public life.The Venice exhibition, titled Security Guarantees, uses the deer as its central image.

Curators say the title reflects the failure of international security assurances to prevent the destruction caused by Russia’s invasion and positions the sculpture as a metaphor for forced displacement.“We wanted to continue this journey as a metaphor, like so many Ukrainian refugees moving across Europe and the world,” Marushchak said.

Before arriving in Venice, the sculpture traveled by road through Warsaw, Prague, Vienna, Brussels and Paris. In each city, it was temporarily displayed in public spaces, often in prominent institutional or historic settings far removed from its original location in an industrial eastern Ukrainian town.

According to Kateryna Khimei, one of the public programme organizers accompanying the project, the deer has acquired new meaning for displaced residents from Pokrovsk and nearby communities.“The deer has become a symbol of hope and survival,” she said. “People come to touch it because it connects them to a place that no longer exists in the same way.”Khimei, whose own family left the region, said the sculpture now functions as a physical reference point for memory, especially as much of the city faces destruction.

“It’s important to speak not only about people who survived, but also about cultural objects that did not survive,” she said. “For many, this is the last surviving feature of their city.”The project arrives at a politically sensitive moment for the Biennale itself. This year, organizers invited Russia back to participate in its national pavilion after an absence since 2022. The decision has generated criticism in parts of the international art community and tension with Italian cultural officials.

Members of the Ukrainian team said they do not want their pavilion to be framed solely in opposition to Russia, but they argue that cultural representation cannot be separated from the wider consequences of the war.Ivanna Kozachenko, another curator of the public programme, said Russia’s return to the Biennale risks overshadowing broader discussions about cultural destruction in Ukraine.

“They destroyed so much cultural heritage in our country, in Syria and Chechnya, and now they are sending their culture to Venice,” she said. “Why should this happen?”In Paris, the deer was displayed beneath UNESCO’s flags with the Eiffel Tower visible behind it, a symbolic stop before its final transfer to Venice.

The timing was notable: Russia remains a UNESCO member state, while attacks on Ukrainian heritage sites continue. The day after the Paris event, a Russian drone strike hit central Lviv near the Bernardine monastery, part of the city’s UNESCO-listed historic center.At the Biennale, the deer will be installed near the entrance to the Giardini, the main exhibition grounds.

Rather than standing on solid ground, it will hang suspended from a crane, creating ambiguity over whether it is being placed into position or removed from it.For the curators, that uncertainty reflects the sculpture’s present condition: no longer belonging to the city it was built for, and not yet attached to any permanent future.