Preview Days: May 6 – 8, 2026
On View: May 9 – November 22, 2026
July 9, 2025 (Austria) – Austrian choreographer and performance artist Florentina Holzinger has been selected to represent Austria at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia with SeaWorld Venice, a bold new interdisciplinary commission curated by Nora-Swantje Almes (Gropius Bau, Berlin). Known for her genre-defying work that positions the body as both subject and medium to challenge socio-political conventions, Holzinger uses her long-standing research into the element as a point of departure to imagine new ways of living, resisting, and transforming. Blending dance, theatre, and performance art, she approaches water as both subject and symbol, using the body as a site where nature and technology collide. On view from May 9 – November 22, 2026, the project will feature a permanent installation at the Austrian Pavilion alongside a series of site-specific actions across Venice and its lagoon, inviting audiences into participatory encounters with some of the most urgent themes of our time.
‘I am honored to represent Austria at the 2026 Biennale Arte. This opportunity presents an exciting and entirely new challenge for my team and me. Whether on stage, in galleries, or in public spaces, the essence of my work lies in the uncompromising use of the body as a medium. The body becomes the stage where social and political conditions and processes are negotiated directly. My work takes an unconventional and boundary-pushing approach to examining our reality and its transformation. In Venice - a city caught in a profound and precarious relationship with water - my ongoing fascination with this element will take on new dimensions. Here, the body will play a central role in exploring the interdependence and interplay between nature and technology. I am grateful for this trust and looking forward to the challenge ahead with great anticipation’, says Florentina Holzinger.
As SeaWorld Venice will unfold beyond the Giardini della Biennale, the project will echo Holzinger’s series of experimental, site-specific formats titled Études, a body of work she has developed since 2020, consisting of choreographic exercises and performative actions staged in public, transitory spaces. In doing so, the commission becomes an open-ended exploration that unfolds across multiple formats and locations, drawing on aquatic creatures from mythological and classical narratives to investigate water’s cultural, ecological, and political significance. Embracing an interdisciplinary approach, the commission includes a permanent installation and performances at the Austrian Pavilion, and a series of Études dispersed throughout Venice’s urban landscape and its lagoon, activating the city’s social spaces and inviting visitors into immersive, participatory encounters. In this way, the Études function not only as performances but as catalysts for social interaction and transformation, engaging Venice itself, its waters, and its people as integral agents in the work’s unfolding.
Holzinger’s participation reflects Austria’s avant-garde artistic legacy at La Biennale di Venezia. Drawing from a broad range of body practice genres and with critical engagement of their histories—including Viennese Actionism, feminist body art, bodybuilding, ballet, cabaret, and circus—Holzinger’s practice merges physical extremity with cultural critique. These references converge in her visceral deconstruction of femininity, where the body becomes a charged site for confronting dominant cultural narratives. Through poetic yet unflinching imagery, she lays bare the intertwined structures of patriarchy and capitalism, revealing the vulnerability of human bodies and the systems they navigate.
In SeaWorld Venice, Holzinger continues her inquiry into female representation and physicality while expanding her long- standing exploration of water, using Venice itself as a stage for new possibilities within her evolving practice. “Florentina Holzinger works in imagery that I had never seen before: Ballet with motorbikes, a choreographed helicopter that splashed water in my face, female bodies controlling heavy machinery or suspended from hooks. In her all-encompassing artistic practice, she poetically dissects patriarchy and capitalism to show the vulnerability of our bodies and the world, reminding us of the inherited political dimension of the female body. She radically expands what is considered possible - a mindset that is contagious and that we need right now more than ever”, says curator Nora-Swantje Almes.
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NOTES TO EDITORS:
Address:
Giardini della Biennale, Sestiere Castello, 30122 Venice, Italy
About Florentina Holzinger:
Holzinger works across artistic disciplines and has produced extensive, widely discussed and awarded theatre productions. Her most recent stage productions include ‘A Year Without Summer’ (2025), her first opera project ‘SANCTA’ (2024), ‘Ophelia’s Got Talent’ (2022), ‘A Divine Comedy’ (2021), ‘Etude for an Emergency’ (2020) and her most toured work ‘TANZ’ (2019). She has been an associate artist with Volksbühne since 2020. With the Etude formats, one-off performances in public spaces, Holzinger has gradually opened her practice to the visual arts context, having presented ‘Etudes’ at Schinkel Pavillon Berlin and Bergen Kunsthall amongst others since 2020. Florentina Holzinger studied choreography at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam.
About Nora-Swantje Almes:
Nora-Swantje Almes is a curator with a focus on performance in the visual arts context and performative exhibition formats. She has been Curator of the Live Programme and Outreach at the Gropius Bau Berlin since 2024. Prior to this, she headed the live programme at Bergen Kunsthall, Norway, for three years, where she developed the commissioned work Hafen- Etude with Florentina Holzinger and her team in summer 2024. In her curatorial career, she has held positions at Glasgow International, Participant Inc., New York, Artangel London, and Schinkel Pavillon Berlin.
Image Credits:
Florentina Holzinger, 2024. Photography by Elsa Okazaki.