10 SCENES FROM VENICE Awakening the Senses, Beyond Mere Astonishment
By Anna Son
Florentina Holzinger, the acclaimed artist representing the Austrian Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale, unveiled her site-specific series Étude as part of an opening performance. The spectacle took place on the expansive open sea, miles away from the main island of Venice, just hours before the grand debut of her new exhibition, Seaworld Venice.
Amid the Venetian Lagoon, atop a majestic barge, female performers playing instruments elegantly and dynamically ascended a crane. As the crane gracefully moved, a monumental bell emerged from the water, revealing Holzinger positioned within it in a striking inverted posture. Like an artistic awakening designed to gently challenge patriarchal conventions and institutional authority, she resonated the bell using her own bodily movement, sending deep vibrations across the ocean. After the majestic chimes echoed over the waters, the refined bell and the performers smoothly departed by boat toward the Austrian Pavilion in the Giardini. In this manner, Étude transitioned into Seaworld Venice with natural fluid grace. Within Seaworld Venice, Holzinger magnificently transformed the Austrian Pavilion into a colossal, living ecosystem—a harmonious blend of a sacred sanctuary, an aquatic theme park, and a sophisticated water-cycling infrastructure.
The inquiries Holzinger presents are profoundly universal. She contemplates water as a life-sustaining resource that we engage with daily, as a beautifully curated element of global culture, and as a transformative medium for the human body. Through the lens of water, she invites the audience to thoughtfully reflect on the social frameworks and shared beliefs that support our world, revealing the fascinating mechanisms of modern society with remarkable depth and vision.
