From piss tanks to puppets, the 61th Venice Biennale opening week was an art-induced fever dream; a multiverse of official venues and satellite exhibitions, spanning churches, galleries, and museums across the city and its surrounding islands. Crowds spilled into water buses, dancing between a seemingly endless stream of private openings, live performances, and afterparties. It was both exciting and pure chaos. A naked performer hung from a giant bell in the Giardini. Faux babies wore sunglasses and QR-coded diapers. The legendary Cicciolina – former porn star, Italian parliamentarian, and Jeff Koons muse – performed her Italo Disco hits.

Between the long queues, guestlists, a literal storm, and of course, Spritz, there were many stand-outs, from Björk radiating pure joy in Bottega Veneta FW26 at the Icelandic Pavilion opening party, to the Vatican’s Holy See Pavilion, set in the 17th-century Giardino Mistico, which featured a soundtrack of Brian Eno, FKA twigs, and Patti Smith, among others. Elsewhere, Kelsey Lu performed a secret show at Palazzo Diado – Willem Dafoe was spotted in attendance – and Asian Dope Boys blessed us with club culture rituals at the Kuboraum showcase. 

This year’s opening week also saw the biggest protests in recent Biennale history. As hundreds poured onto the streets in support of Palestine, several pavilions shut down their spaces in solidarity – “the babies are on strike,” read a sign in front of the Japanese Pavilion in reference to artist Ei Arakawa-Nash’s much-papped exhibit. Just before opening day, the Biennale jury had resigned en masse amid public tension over Israel and Russia, as geopolitical tensions, parties and protests all played out at once.

While it’s impossible to attend everything (the FOMO is inevitable), here’s my highlights from Venice Biennale 2026. 

FLORENTINA HOLZINGER, AUSTRIAN PAVILION 

Rarely has a pavilion generated so much buzz as the Austrian pavilion this year. With queues stretching for hours across the Giardini (a friend advised me to ‘bring a book’), Seaworld Venice is a no holds barred extravaganza – social media is already flooded with clips of Florentina Holzinger’s naked performers suspended from a large bell. Not to mention a tank of purified piss, pumped in from two toilets in the exhibit, which visitors are encouraged to use, though organisers warn you that ‘number twos’ aren’t allowed (as indicated by an explosion of shit in a nearby tank). Elsewhere, nude performers climbed weather vanes and ran circles on jet skis. A robot dog even made an appearance. But, I guess, you had to be there. 

MAJA MALOU LYSE, DANISH PAVILION 

The youngest artist ever to represent Denmark in Venice, Maja Malou Lyse’s Things To Come sits at the intersection of art, porn and sperm bank technology.  In collaboration with DIS magazine, the post-internet media platform, visitors enter a room of floor-to-wall screens, featuring a film about how porn images can dramatically improve the motility of sperm when delivered via VR equipment – based on a study conducted by the world’s largest sperm bank. Given the declining rate of male fertility across the world, the work raises some interesting ideas around the relationship between media technologies and human survival. Plus, there’s an accompanying soundtrack by Amnesia Scanner’s Ville Haimala, and Ciccolina’s afterparty was an iconic addition. 

STRANGE RULES, PALAZZO DIEDO

OK I admit it – I’m biased. But Strange Rules might be one the best off-site programmes this year. Curated by Mat Dryhurst, Holly Herndon, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, the group exhibition showcases some of my favourite digital media artists and thinkers. Grouped around the theme of Protocol Art, a practice that engages with the underlying rules that dictate how culture is produced, distributed, and perceived in a digital age, there’s Mat and Holly’s film projections of worms, Simon Denny’s futurist paintings of Italian brainrot character Bombardino Crocodillo (which I once described as an example of futurist brainrot), a hypnotic multimedia work by Trevor Paglen, and a gift shop-style installation courtesy of New Models and Joshua Citarella, featuring what I can only describe as the contents of my social media feed – and brain – over the past five years. 

ASIAN DOPE BOYS, KUBORAUM SHOWCASE 

The Shanghai-based, multi-disciplinary troupe Asian Dope Boys is known for its absurdist theatrics, featuring an ever-expanding cast of multi-disciplinary artists, musicians, and performers. Presented in collaboration with Berlin fashion label Kuboraum, the Venice takeover witnessed an absurd array of live performances, as provocative as they were moving. A special mention goes to Philippines-born Joshua Serafin’s futurist, non-human extravaganza, soundtracked by Görkem Şen and Pierre Bayet; Ziúr and choreographer Kianí del Valle (a frequent collaborator of stars such as Bad Bunny to Billie Eilish); and Indonesian choreographer Siko Setyanto’s closing performance, bridging ancient traditions with explosive performance and an electro-Gamelan music score.

JENNA SUTELA, FINNISH PAVILION 

I’ve been a fan of Finnish artist Jenna Sutela’s work for many years now, which features alien languages, slime moulds and psychadelics. Her latest project, Aeolian Suite, is no exception. Inspired by the Italian theatrical tradition of Commedia dell'arte, the piece unfolds as an elemental drama, featuring a cast of fuzzy (and ultra-cute!) protagonists, resembling wind muffs: the trickster, the lovers, the sad clown, and the magician, all representing one of the five winds of Venice. Each styled with elaborate hair-does, in collaboration with artist Sara Mathiasson, the work manifests through a folkloric windscape of sound and movement, composed using meteorological data, musical instruments, and wind recordings from Venice, Helsinki, and beyond. Highly recommend.

LI YI-FAN, TAIWANESE PAVILION

I first encountered Screen Melancholy after several friends told me it was by far the “best thing they’d seen” during Venice this year. Then I understood why. Combining puppets and performance lecture, Amsterdam-based Li Yi-Fan’s video work is a genius – and genuinely funny – piece of meta-theater, where puppet-characters recite lectures about computer animation and high-low image culture, spiralling into a Russian doll-style montage of puppets manipulating puppets, all set in progressively smaller versions of the palazzo. Accompanying the film are 3D-printed sculptures – hands, feet, a head – echoing the bodies of the digital performers, which feels particularly meta (where does the puppet end and the human begin?)

NATASHA TONTEY, LAS ART FOUNDATION AND AMOS REX

A shapeshifting trickster takes centre stage in this exhibition by multimedia artist Natasha Tontey, which reimagines the story of Len Karamoy, a female insurgent from Cold War-era Indonesia. Combining B-movie aesthetics with ritual mysticism, Tontey’s protagonist biohacks her body with fungi, black-market hormones, and hallucinogens, transforming into a mutant with hench muscle and many boobs. It’s a campy, trippy ride, using speculative fiction to question historical narratives and imagine new possible futures. 

EVA AND FRANCO MATTES, AUTOTELIC FOUNDATION 

Italian duo Eva and Franco Mattes, both pioneers in the net art movement, staged their exhibition, Ragebait, across two venues. The first, a private swimming pool on Giudecca, projecting hyper-online TikTok Reels onto the water, reminiscent of a modern-day Narcissus. The second, an exhibition space, housing a physical reincarnation of the beloved internet meme, ‘Cursed Cat’, a lol-cat adjacent character known for its ‘angry as fuk’ expression. Its presence is spread across several IRL sculptures made from wood, glass and plastic. Funnily enough, the exhibition’s official tote bag, featuring Cursed Cat, could be spotted all over the city, which, I imagine, will only boost its memetic spread, both online and offline.