This month, our regular overview of Aotearoa artists on the global stage takes us to the La Biennale di Venezia, where the illusion of a politically neutral art world did not survive the opening week.
Curated from the vision of the late Koyo Kouoh, In Minor Keys, the 61st edition of the Venice Biennale saw participants sign open letters, commissioning bodies remove and reinstate artists’ work, artists withdraw from consideration for awards, European funding threatened, boycotts, mass protests, and the first strike in its 131-year history. These actions were in solidarity with Palestine and Ukraine. Kouoh’s own international jury resigned after the Biennale board refused to exclude nations whose leaders face crimes against humanity charges at the International Criminal Court (at present that is Israel and Russia, though the United States is driving conflicts that break the international rules based order too).
Since then, the cultural commentary has been on point. On the ground, critic Cicek Dogruel observed that institutional “neutrality” only normalises existing violence, while Triple Ampersand noted that Venice’s true value now lies in exposing these infrastructures where art and politics interplay. As The Daniel G. Andújar Archive diagnosed, the old model of diplomatic national representation isn’t broken; it is functioning exactly as designed, acting as a zone of truce while the states that back it wage wars.
As this outdated model revealed itself, our practitioners (and their supporters) were all over Venice during the preview days: down alleyways, on peripheral islands, even in the heart of the Giardini.
In the Central Pavilion, Pelenakeke Brown featured in Denniston Hill’s Chimera, a mixed-media installation examining how art and architecture “enslave and liberate our senses.” On Giudecca Island, Te Tuhi’s Paerangi Venice initiative brought together John Turi-Tiakitai, Kereama Taepa, Neke Moa, and Suzanne Tamaki to wānanga with local communities. Chelsea Winstanley gathered the community at the Rossini Cinema for her and Nigel Borell’s film TOITŪ: Visual Sovereignty, while George Nuku showed carved Plexiglass at Palazzo Donà dalle Rose. Simon Denny’s AI-generated compositions were included in Strange Rules at Palazzo Diedo, critiquing defense-tech automation; Virginia Leonard’s “fugly” ceramics were on show at Fondazione Dries van Noten; and Elisapeta Heta Hinemoa’s 2024 installation The Body of Wainuiātea was folded into Pietro Torrisi’s Confluences, A Rights of Nature Story screening at Ocean Space.
Meanwhile, our national arts agency kept their communications almost solely about our national pavilion. Last year, Manatū Taonga’s Amplify: A Creative and Cultural Strategy 2025–2030 explicitly outlined an ambition to make New Zealand a "creative powerhouse with global reach," and push our "soft power" ranking into the top 25 countries. Yet in the face of artists and workers in Venice highlighting today’s most pressing issues, Creative New Zealand did not engage. One wonders what is meant then, by that ambition to reach globally and push soft power at the heart of our national cultural policy. Is a microphone being held while ethical responsibilities that come with holding it are refused?
On Friday, 8 May, while 27 national pavilions staged historical closures and arts workers went on strike, the New Zealand Pavilion stayed open, failing to contribute a statement or voice to international discussions. While global creative communities convened at Sale Docks with ANGA (Art Not Genocide Alliance) organisers to discuss solidarity in times of genocide, our cultural leadership’s lack of engagement spoke volumes. When questioned by The Big Idea in mid-May, CNZ gave a statement that did not address the issues being discussed. Instead it said the “priority is ensuring a strong platform for New Zealand artists to promote their work”. It was a masterclass in institutional artwashing that has enraged many in the Aotearoa arts community.
From where I stood, this timidness carried through into our official presentation: Dr. Fiona Pardington’s Taharaki Skyside at Calle della Pietà. The slick, minimal exhibition offered a reprieve from the bustling Biennale, and feels totally detached from geopolitical realities. Through 17 large-scale photographs of extinct or endangered taxidermied manu, the exhibition attempts a narrative of ecological loss. But, between the sunset-inspired rainbow frames and landscapes photoshopped into the pupils of kākā kura and South Island takahē, Taharaki Skyside drifts uncomfortably close to a corporate state aesthetic.
At the opening celebrations, MET curator Maia Nuku’s moving speech and the Ngāi Tahu delegation’s waiata clashed with the pavilion's function as a playground for philanthropists and cultural elites. On 3 June, our national pavilion and “Fiona Pardington & team” appeared as one of sixty-seven signatories to a letter initially sent to the biennale on 20 May and made public after no response was received. The letter asks that their names be removed from the “Visitors’ Lions” awards, in solidarity with the jury that resigned in April. It states that the artists are beginning next steps into legal action against the Biennale. It leaves us with a question that grows louder after every edition: why continue funding expensive national real estate within structures artists are fighting against when these resources could be spent on deep, long-term curatorial exchanges that present our artists on their own terms?
Just days before this publication, the Learning from Venice professional development programme wrapped up, which immersed eight early-career Aotearoa artists, curators, and writers into the Biennale's complex systems. We can only hope that this cohort will choose to engage with the realities of genocide, censorship, and human rights more readily and critically than Aotearoa’s official presentation and institutions did in May.
On this month
Australia & Pacific
Kalisolaite ’Uhila: Koe tenga tete to tete utu pe koia (the seed you sow you will reap) | UNSW Galleries, Gadigal Lands Sydney | Until 6 August
Using performance, video, and sensorial elements like the scent of citrus, ’Uhila retraces his youth working in Australian orange orchards to explore how manual labour, family hospitality, and endurance shape masculine identity.
Spilt Milk (and hard honey) | West Space, Naarm Melbourne | Opens 13 June
Guest curated by Talia Smith, this group show uses the historical promise of a "land of milk and honey" to highlight how contemporary Pasifika artists subvert Eurocentric archives and protect collective memory.
Recovering Art | The Dax Centre, Naarm Melbourne | Until 18 December
A group exhibition pairing contemporary practitioners with historical works from the Cunningham Dax Collection, created in mid-twentieth-century psychiatric institutions. Features an intergenerational collaboration between Ruth Buchanan, her daughter Eleanor, and Māori activist photographer John Miller, alongside a work by Luke Willis Thompson exploring psychiatry, disability and state intervention.
Asia
Peter Rive | Tiny Corner Gallery, Tokyo | 20 June – 21 June
Occupying an intimate, micro-sized gallery for one weekend only, Rive’s paintings offer a moment’s respite from the buzzing metropolis.
The Americas
Sam Hamilton: TO AVOID DROWNING, BECOME THE OCEAN | The Luminary, St. Louis | Opens 26 June
Hamilton’s socially engaged sonic installation uses a collaborative choral tapestry of human breath to translate the sounds of the Pacific, treating the ocean as a continuous, living system felt through atmosphere.
Europe & UK
Jasmine Togo-Brisby: Liquid Land | Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow | Open 5 June
Togo-Brisby confronts Glasgow’s colonial architecture by building a full-scale replica of her ancestors' home, using mirrors and crow-feathers to expose the deceptive trickery of nineteenth-century Pacific "blackbirding" slave trades.
Kah Bee Chow: We Do Not Part & Citadel I, II, III | Kunskapsparken, Lund | Permanent
Chow unveils two permanent public works in Sweden, using sea-green terrazzo and patinated bronze sculptures to contrast the protective forms of traditional Malaysian turtle-shaped graves with architectural logic.
Kate Newby | Museum Folkwang, Essen | Opens 12 June
Newby brings her signature attention to everyday textures with a new site-specific installation that activates the museum’s outdoor area.
Simon Denny: Rules Based Order | Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Munich | Until 31 July
Denny presents new paintings and sculpture, continuing his research into the histories of Italian Futurism and their resonance with the proliferation of images from the burgeoning Defense Tech sector in Germany and the USA.
Opportunities beyond Aotearoa
Fundación Casa Wabi – ArtReview Prize 2026 | Puerto Escondido, México | Apply by 14 June
A fully-funded residency prize at a Tadao Ando-designed complex in Oaxaca, supporting artists across all media to engage in reciprocal, cross-cultural dialogue with local Mexican communities.
16th Dakar Biennale – International Open Call | Senegal | Apply by 15 June
The premier platform for contemporary African and global diasporic art invites applications for its milestone international exhibition, favouring rigorous projects that challenge Eurocentric art-world hegemonies.
BigCi Artist Residency | Blue Mountains, Australia | Apply by 26 June
The environmental initiative welcomes multidisciplinary creators to explore ecological issues within the World Heritage-listed Blue Mountains wilderness, providing extensive indoor and outdoor undercover workspaces for a self-funded, subsidized international fee of AUD$350 per week.
