National Pavilions We Loved at the Venice Biennale

Hrag Vartanian and Aruna D’Souza discuss the national pavilions at the 2026 Venice Biennale while also defending the pavilion model itself. They argue that despite the problems inherent in the nation-state, eliminating national pavilions can obscure existing inequalities and make smaller countries less visible within large international exhibitions. In the first part of their conversation, they highlight Ecuador and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ecuador’s pavilion, featuring the Indigenous-led Tawna collective and artist Óscar Santillán, centers storytelling, identity, and resilience. Tawna’s film Llaki examines how Indigenous people with non-heteronormative sexualities continue to live under colonial structures and how those pressures shape families and relationships, while refusing to reduce the story to loss alone. The Democratic Republic of Congo makes its Biennale debut with nine artists from the country and its diaspora. Their works address colonial history, migration, mining, and the human and environmental costs of extractive industries. Vartanian and D’Souza describe the presentation as ambitious and fierce, and see such participation as evidence that national pavilions can still create space for artistic conversations that might otherwise disappear within a much larger international exhibition.

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