Art & Culture

All the Arab Pavilions at the 2026 Venice Biennale

BYZamzam Rage

May 7, 2026

Often described as the world’s first and most historic biennale, the Venice Biennale has long existed as a space where art and politics intersect. A stage where nations present works that reflect, challenge, and respond to the urgencies of their time, for its 61st edition, the late Koyo Kouoh proposed the theme In Minor Keys; a curatorial framework that shifts attention away from spectacle and toward quieter frequencies: intimacy, memory, subtle resistance, and the stories often pushed to the margins. In moments like these, when the global climate feels increasingly charged, that proposition feels especially resonant.

Art has always been a form of self-expression, but it is also a way for countries to assert narratives, identities, and perspectives on a global stage. This is what makes the participation of Arab countries in this year’s Biennale particularly significant. Their presence serves as a collective insistence on being heard in a world that too often prefers to speak for us.

From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, this year’s pavilions move through silence, sound, craft, memory, and oral histories. Together, they reflect both continuity and change, marking a notable expansion in representation that feels long overdue.

SOMALIA

Perhaps the most poignant entry is the Somalia Pavilion, making its historic first appearance with Saddexleey by artists Ayan Farah, Asmaa Jama, and Warsan Shire. Named after a Somali poetic form shaped through triadic composition, the pavilion transforms the Arsenale into a “social architecture” of memory. It’s an experience that unfolds through scent, sound, and image, translating the metrical precision of Somali verse into physical space. By stepping onto this global platform for the first time, Somalia is challenging the static nature of the museum, offering instead a site of living continuity where the past is practiced rather than simply preserved.

QATAR

Following this wave of new beginnings is the Qatar Pavilion, also making its debut this year with Untitled 2026 (a gathering of remarkable people) by a collective of international and regional practitioners. Rather than functioning as a traditional gallery, the pavilion unfolds as a communal space for relational encounters, where contemporary art meets food, sound, and performance. In a context like Venice, where spectacle can often overshadow intimacy, Qatar’s first footprint feels less like a statement and more like an invitation to gather, pause, and connect.

SAUDI ARABIA

Saudi Arabia continues its sophisticated run in Venice with Dana Awartani’s May your tears never dry, you who weep over stones. Situated at the intersection of geometry, restoration, and traditional craft, Awartani’s work explores the cyclical relationship between preservation and destruction. By drawing on ancient artisan techniques to engage contemporary Middle Eastern histories, the pavilion becomes a meditation on the silent labor of cultural memory, and how the hand itself can act as a form of resistance against erasure.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

This sense of subtlety continues in the UAE Pavilion with Washwasha, curated by Bana Kattan and bringing together a collective of six artists working across sound, installation, and moving images. Named after the Arabic word for “whispering,” the pavilion explores the invisible frequencies that bind memory and community together. In a world saturated by visual excess, the UAE turns instead toward listening—toward the oral, the intimate, and the barely audible traces through which culture continues to move across generations and rapidly shifting landscapes.

OMAN

Across the way, the Oman Pavilion presents Haitham Al Busafi’s Zīnah (Adornment), a sensory meditation on ethics, beauty, and reciprocity. Centered around the Al-Zaanah—the traditional silver harness used for Omani horses— the installation fills the space with suspended silver forms hanging above desert sand, chiming softly as visitors move through it. Each step subtly reshapes the terrain and alters the soundscape, turning the audience into participants within the work itself. Rather than treating adornment as decoration alone, the pavilion frames it as a reflection of care, an ethical gesture that reveals how a culture chooses to honor both human and non-human companions.

LEBANON

The Lebanon Pavilion presents Nabil Nahas’s Don’t Get Me Wrong, an immersive installation of monumental panels that merge Islamic geometry, botanical forms, and Western abstraction. Drawing from both Mediterranean landscapes and sacred visual traditions, Nahas constructs intricate ecosystems that oscillate between order and chaos, intimacy and monumentality. Rather than reducing Lebanon to a singular narrative, the pavilion insists on the country’s long history of cultural crossings, layered identities, and artistic experimentation that continues to resonate far beyond its borders.

MOROCCO

This focus on subtle transmission continues in Morocco’s debut national pavilion with Asǝṭṭa by Amina Agueznay, curated by Meriem Berrada. Through suspended woven forms, braided materials, and large-scale textile structures, the installation transforms the act of weaving into a spatial language of memory and movement. Created in collaboration with artisans across Morocco, the pavilion treats heritage not as something frozen in the past, but as a living and evolving practice carried through the intelligence of the hand.

EGYPT

In a radical departure from the surrounding noise, the Egypt Pavilion presents Armen Agop’s Silence Pavilion: Between the Tangible and the Intangible. Filled with meditative sculptures suspended within dim light, the space suggests that silence is not an absence of meaning, but a powerful form of presence. In dialogue with In Minor Keys, Agop’s work resists spectacle in favor of stillness, offering a necessary counterpoint to the contemporary culture of constant visibility and noise.

SYRIA

Marking a new chapter for Syria’s presence at the Biennale, the Syria Pavilion presents Sara Shamma’s The Tower Tomb of Palmyra, curated by Yuko Hasegawa. Combining painting, architecture, sound, and scent, the immersive installation draws inspiration from the ancient funerary towers of Palmyra—once symbols of cultural coexistence across Greco-Roman, Arab, and Aramaic histories. Through this reconstruction of memory, Shamma transforms the pavilion into both a mourning space and an act of cultural reclamation, insisting on the endurance of Syrian heritage beyond destruction and displacement.

PALESTINE

While Palestine does not have an official national pavilion at this year’s Biennale, the weight of the current moment finds its voice through Gaza – No Words, an independent collateral exhibition presented by the Palestine Museum US at Palazzo Mora. Speaking through thread and silence rather than speeches, the exhibition features 100 pieces of Tatreez handcrafted by women in refugee camps, totaling more than 5.5 million stitches.

Each thread carries the memory of a home, a displacement, or a moment of survival, ensuring that the human reality of Gaza remains impossible to abstract or ignore. In the context of In Minor Keys, its quiet material language becomes all the more piercing.