{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-article-js","path":"/personal-structures-confluences-venice-2026/","result":{"data":{"wordpressPost":{"id":117666,"slug":"personal-structures-confluences-venice-2026","title":"New exhibition ‘Personal Structures – Confluences’ to open in Venice in May 2026","excerpt":"The international contemporary art exhibition by the European Cultural Centre Italy will transform Venice into an open laboratory of visions, practices, and languages","content":"\n

The international contemporary art exhibition by the European Cultural Centre Italy will transform Venice into an open laboratory of visions, practices, and languages

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Opening on 9 May and running until 22 November 2026, the eighth edition of Personal Structures, titled Confluences, unfolds across the historic venues of Palazzo Bembo, Palazzo Mora and the Marinaressa Gardens as a citywide, multi-site exhibition.

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Positioned as a platform for international contemporary practice, Confluences takes its conceptual cue from the idea of meeting points: spaces where currents intersect, overlap and reconfigure one another. Against a backdrop of accelerated cultural production and increasing fragmentation, it proposes a temporary field in which difference is held in proximity, rather than resolved into coherence. 

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With 175 artists from over 40 countries, the exhibition assembles an interconnected landscape of practices spanning visual art, performance, and research. This expanded field is further articulated through the introduction of PS Design, a new section that positions design in closer dialogue with art and architecture. The inclusion signals an ongoing shift towards hybrid forms of production in which disciplinary boundaries are not merely crossed, but actively destabilised.

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Rashid Al Khalifa, Inhabited Crate. Courtesy Rashid Al Khalifa
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ORLAN, Cries against a genealogy of increasing violence. Courtesy ORLAN
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Across the three venues, historical reference points and contemporary practices are brought into dialogue. At Palazzo Mora, ORLAN presents We Are Inconsolable (2025–2026), a series that engages AI-generated imagery through painterly intervention, extending her longstanding interrogation of embodiment, authorship and technological mediation. In the same venue, Keith Haring’s visual language intersects with Kozo (Eden Karo), whose work reinterprets classical drawing techniques through contemporary pop-inflected imagery. 

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At Palazzo Bembo, the exhibition opens into a more explicitly cross-media register through a collaboration with Shueisha, presenting JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure by one of the most famous Japanese Mangaka, Hirohiko Araki. Alongside this, projects such as the Japanese platform B-OWND brings together art, craftsmanship and hybrid practices and features a space designed for public tea ceremonies. At the Marinaressa Gardens, large-scale works such as Paresh Maity’s Equilibrium and Rashid Al Khalifa’s Inhabited Crate engage the landscape as an active agent rather than a neutral backdrop, shaping the viewer’s movement and perception.

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The European Cultural Centre Italy also continues its collaboration with the Palestine Museum US, selected as an Official Collateral Event of the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Presented at Palazzo Mora, “___________” * *Gaza – No Words – See the Exhibit, curated by Faisal Saleh, brings together 100 hand-embroidered panels produced by Palestinian women, employing tatreez as a visual and narrative structure for testimonies of loss, resilience and survival in Gaza since October 2023.

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William Kentridge and Stephens Tapestry Studio, France divisee en ses 86 departements (Dancing Lady), 2016. Courtesy Stepghens Tapestry Studio
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G Sim Seyeon LEEKI,찰나, a moment we shared s26-1-1, 2026. Courtesy Sondy Studio
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Further extending the exhibition framework, ECC Italy hosts two National Pavilions of the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. The El Salvador Pavilion, for its first participation, presents Cartographies of the Displaced by J. Oscar Molina, reflecting on migration and diasporic experience, with the series Children of the World at its core. The Seychelles Pavilion features Egbert Marday, whose sculptural and painterly practice draws on an intimate engagement with nature and cultural identity.

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The programme is completed by the ECC Awards, which recognise artistic practices engaging with the curatorial theme Confluences. Spanning curatorial research, interdisciplinary production and emerging practices, the awards also include a special category for artists working within activist frameworks. Winners will be announced by an international jury at the close of the exhibition.

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In Venice, a city shaped by movement, the notion of confluence feels particularly charged, raising the question of whether these intersections generate transformation and mirror the contemporary art world. 

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 Free entry. Palazzo Bembo, Palazzo Mora and the Marinaressa Gardens, Venice. 9 May through 22 November 2026. Tuesdays closed

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