Preview Days: May 6 – 8, 2026
Pavilion Opening: May 6, 2026 | 12 PM
On View: May 9 – November 22, 2026
February 5, 2026 (Austria) – Austrian choreographer and performance artist Florentina Holzinger will represent Austria at the 61st International Art Exhibition – 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 challenges socio-political conventions, Holzinger uses her long-standing research into the element of water—as both subject and symbol—to explore the human body in a radically changing landscape, in which nature and technology collide. On view from May 9 – November 22, 2026, the project will feature a permanent live installation and performances at the Austrian Pavilion, alongside site-specific Études across Venice and its lagoon.
Florentina Holzinger combines extreme physicality with theatrical precision to probe the limits of corporeal agency. Working across dance, performance, opera, and theatre, and critically engaging with their histories, the artist blends legitimised ‘high’ culture with pop and countercultural currents to unsettle the lines between spectacle and subversion. Her works experiment with endurance and moments of extremity—to make power legible at the level of the body. Elemental forces, such as water and bodily fluids, recur as material presence in her work and are used as agents that act upon bodies while implicating the audiences who witness them. SEAWORLD VENICE derives from this ongoing enquiry as a new work that enters into dialogue with Venice, a city defined by its entanglement with water, survival, and the consequences of human intervention.
Water, levels rising; water that we drink and excrete in countless cycles every day; water, a vital, life-sustaining natural resource and highly managed commodity; water, to plunge in, dive in, and emerge from, perhaps transformed: SEAWORLD VENICE is conceived as an underwater theme park, sewage treatment plant, and sacred building—a machinic organism inhabited by performers for the duration of Biennale Arte 2026. Through poetic yet unflinching imagery, Holzinger flirts with the limitations of humanity, revealing the vulnerability of human bodies and the systems they navigate. ‘Florentina Holzinger paints an apocalyptic scenario that is already here, illustrating humankind’s complicity in a collapsing (eco)system: lives lived in the waste of others. Fleeting images and compositions that haunt us, edging the impossible. 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.
SEAWORLD VENICE will unfold beyond the Giardini della Biennale and across the city through performances titled Études—a body of work the artist has been developing 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 evolves across multiple formats and locations. Rising from the depths of the Venetian lagoon, where turbo-tourism’s waste lies at rest, and ascending into the city’s skies, Holzinger’s performers—human and otherwise—reveal the vulnerability and resilience of bodies and the world alike. The artist states, ‘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.’ The opening Étude will take place on the morning of May 6, 2026.
On the occasion of Florentina Holzinger’s project at the Austrian Pavilion, Bierke Verlag, Berlin, will release HOLZINGER, her first major publication in collaboration with Gropius Bau Berlin and Kunsthalle Wien. The monographic work will bring together perspectives on her artistic practice, visual and choreographic vocabulary, and central themes, and includes texts by Claire Bishop, Caroline Lillian Schopp, Mire Lee, and Anna Leon, alongside an introduction by curator Nora-Swantje Almes and an interview with Florentina Holzinger.
NOTES TO EDITORS
Visitor Information
SEAWORLD VENICE
Austrian Pavilion
61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
www.seaworldvenice.at
Address
Giardini della Biennale
Sestiere Castello, 30122 Venice, Italy
www.labiennale.org
Preview Days + Opening
Preview days: May 6 – 8, 2026
Opening of the Austrian Pavilion: 6 May 2026, 12 PM
Opening Étude: 6 May 2026 | Limited capacity. Registration opens on April 27, 2026
Exhibition duration: May 9 – November 22, 2026
SEAWORLD VENICE is realised on behalf of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport, Division IV – Arts and Culture. The Lead Partners & Étude Commissioners are Bukhman Foundation and Hartwig Art Foundation. It is supported by the following Partners: The Friends of the Austrian Pavilion, Eva Dichand, Phileas – The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art, and More Spirit Please. The project is co-produced by Ursula Blickle Stiftung, Gropius Bau / Berliner Festspiele (Berlin), Amant (Brooklyn, NY) and Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna). Public funding is contributed by Land Niederösterreich, Land Salzburg, Land Kärnten, and the City of Vienna. You can find the full list of all project partners here: https://www.seaworldvenice.at/thank-you
The project will travel to Gropius Bau, Berlin, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, and Amant, Brooklyn, New York in 2027 and 2028. The Études series will continue as satellite projects, building narratives across different geographies and including collaborations with Vienna Festival, Nitsch Foundation, Kunsthaus Bregenz, marvaða Iceland, TRANSART – Festival for contemporary cultures, and Hartwig Art Foundation in Amsterdam.
About Florentina Holzinger
Holzinger’s works have been awarded the Nestroy (TANZ, 2020) and DER FAUST awards (Ophelia’s Got Talent, 2023) and have been selected by the Theatertreffen Berlin four times in a row (TANZ, Ophelia’s Got Talent, SANCTA, A Year without Summer). Besides her stage productions, Holzinger creates Études, an ongoing series of site-specific, one-off performances in public space that have been presented in collaboration with the Schinkel Pavillon Berlin, Bergen Kunsthall, Atonal Festival, and Wiener Festwochen, among others. Since 2021, she has been an associate artist at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin.
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 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 Harbour Étude 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 the Schinkel Pavillon Berlin.
Image Credits:
Florentina Holzinger, 2026. Photography by Katia Wik.