Florentina Holzinger Time100 Art 2026

By Belinda Luscombe

Standing out at the Venice Biennale, an art festival known for provocation, requires a strong commitment to causing a stir. This year, the Austrian choreographer-performance artist Florentina Holzinger did just that. For her piece Seaworld Venice, she had naked women drive jet skis in circles for hours, naked women scuba dive in a tank of water that was being fed by two urinals (via a NASA-grade filtration system), naked women climbing a rotating weather vane and, finally, naked women using their bodies as the clapper in an enormous bell. (Often, Holzinger herself took on that particularly demanding role.) In a city full of water and historic painted images of the nude female form, visitors waited in snaking lines for the chance to see what all the fuss was about. Holzinger, 40, has also made works featuring roller skating nuns and live body modification. Having initially set out to be a dancer, Holzinger is taking art to a new and yet familiar artistic medium: the human body.