Every other year, the art world flocks to Italy for the Venice Biennale, the world’s grandest and most esteemed recurring art exhibition.
Many are coming with the top priority of seeing the main exhibition, which, in 2024, will be curated by Adriano Pedrosa, the first Latin American to have received the honor. But just as many are there for the national pavilions, which are not officially related to the main show but coincide with it.
Ahead of the 2024 Venice Biennale’s opening in April of that year, announcements are flooding in for the national pavilions. Although most are still being formalized, there have already been meditations on our globalized existence planned. At least one first will take place at that edition, with Benin to stage its inaugural pavilion in tandem with the Biennale.
Below is a look at every pavilion that has been announced so far for the 2024 Venice Biennale. This list will continue to be updated as more announcements are made.
This article was last updated on July 14, 2023, at 10:15 a.m.
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Australia
Image Credit: Photo Venturelli/Getty Images 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 represent Australia 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.
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Austria
Image Credit: ©Maria Ziegelböck 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.
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Belgium
Image Credit: ©Denicolai and Provoost 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.”
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Benin
Image Credit: picture alliance via Getty Image In its Venice Biennale debut, Benin will be represented by a pavilion that aims to promote the country’s “cultural heritage and contemporary art to the world,” according to the country’s President, Patrice Talon. Curator Azu Nwagbogu, who formerly led the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, South Africa, will organize the pavilion, which has not yet detailed its artists.
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Canada
Image Credit: ©Bertille Chéret Two years after showing in the Biennale’s main edition, Kapwani Kiwanga will return to Venice to 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.
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Cyprus
Image Credit: Courtesy Cypriot Pavilion 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.
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Denmark
Image Credit: Photo Kuutak K. Olsen 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.”
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Estonia
Image Credit: Photo Marii Kiisk/Müürileht 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.”
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Finland
Image Credit: Photo Jo Hislop/Courtesy Frame Contemporary Art 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.
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France
Image Credit: ©Virginie Ribaut 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. A curator has not yet been announced for his pavilion.
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Germany
Image Credit: Photo Nick Ash Little is known about the German Pavilion so far, other than that it will be curated by Çağla Ilk, director of the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden. Possibly providing a hint at what her pavilion will be about, Ilk said in a statement, “At a time when wars, man-made natural disasters and authoritarianism are making our societies more and more vulnerable to crises, it is more important than ever to question our previous way of life, which was shaped by nation-state thinking, and to develop new forms of living together.”
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Great Britain
Image Credit: ©Smoking Dogs Films/Courtesy Smoking Dogs Films and Lisson Gallery 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. A curator has not been named for this pavilion, which is likely to be closely watched because Sonia Boyce’s Great Britain Pavilion took the Golden Lion award in 2022.
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Hungary
Image Credit: Courtesy Ludwig Museum 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.
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Iceland
Image Credit: Eyþór Árnason; Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer 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.
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Ireland
Image Credit: Photo Cáit Fahey 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.
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Japan
Image Credit: Photo glimworkers Yuko Mohri has been lining up biennial appearances in recent years, participating in the Bienal de São Paulo, the Biennale of Sydney, and the Gwangju Biennale in 2021, 2022, and 2023, respectively, 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.
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Korea
Image Credit: Photo Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images for Prada 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 feature works known as “Odorama cities” that will 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.
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Lithuania
Image Credit: Courtesy Carlier | Gebauer 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.
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The Netherlands
Image Credit: ©2023 Koos_Breukel 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.
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Nigeria
Image Credit: Photo Credits: Adeniyi-Jones: On Whit Wall; Igwe : Regine Ullrich; Ojih Odutola: Beth Wilkinson; Shonibare: Tom Jamieson, 2023; all others: Courtesy the artist 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.
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Nordic Countries Pavilion
Image Credit: Photo Robert Schittko 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.
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Singapore
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist 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.
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Spain
Image Credit: Courtesy Galeria Leme 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.
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Switzerland
Image Credit: ©Diego Paulino 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.”
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Taiwan
Image Credit: ©TEDxTaipei/Courtesy the artist and TKG+ 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.”
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Turkey
Image Credit: Photo MUHSIN AKGUN 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. What she will produce is still being kept under wraps, although the pavilion’s organizers promised that her new work would in some way contend with “Foreigners Everywhere,” the main exhibition of the Biennale curated by Adriano Pedrosa. Esra Sarıgedik Öktem, who runs a management office for Turkish artists called BüroSarıgedik, will curate the pavilion.
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United States
Image Credit: Courtesy MacArthur Foundation 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. 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.