Akka Project

As we approach the end of Dawit Abebe’s residency at AKKA Project Venice, we are delighted to invite you to the opening of “Layers of Venice”, the exhibition marking the outcome of his artistic research in the city.

Through slow observation, repeated walks, and an intimate engagement with Venice’s shifting landscapes, Dawit has developed a body of work that reflects on his personal encounter with the city’s hidden narratives and layered identity.

Join us on Thursday June 18th, from 6 pm at our venetian venue to celebrate the end of this journey and discover the works conceived through this unique experience.

Please confirm your attendance through the RSVP link in bio.

Photo credits Beatrice Foti

Burano Threads 🪡

While exploring Burano, was struck by the island’s vibrant houses, whose brightly coloured facades are traditionally associated with the local fishing community and life on the lagoon. Today, they remain one of Burano’s most distinctive features, reflecting a history deeply rooted in everyday life and local tradition.

The journey then continued inside the lace workshops, where he observed the making process up close, speaking with artisans and witnessing how intricate patterns take shape through gestures refined over generations. Patience, precision, and skilled hands sustain a practice that is still carefully preserved and passed on through daily work.

In the artist’s eyes, Burano reveals itself as a place where colour, craft, and collective memory remain closely intertwined, carrying its cultural heritage into the present.

Windows of Venice ✨

While exploring Venice, was drawn to the city’s windows. Overlooking canals, courtyards, and narrow streets, each one offered a different perspective on the life unfolding beyond it.

Collected throughout his walks, each window becomes a reminder that every view is partial, and that new ways of seeing often begin with a simple shift in position.
This idea also extends to art, understood as a set of openings onto the world: spaces of exchange where contemporary practice meets broader cultural contexts, each offering a different way of looking and understanding.

Inside the world of Murano Glass with

During his time on Murano island, moved through workshops and furnaces, observing the precision, rhythm, and physicality behind each process. Between heat, breath, and molten material, every moment reveals the balance between control and unpredictability that defines Murano’s glass-making tradition.

Spending time alongside master artisans and glass makers offered a closer understanding of a practice where technique is inseparable from memory, and where knowledge continues to pass through observation, repetition, and daily work.

Thank you Dylan for taking the time!

Venice Encounters ✨

During the opening weeks of Biennale Arte 2026, Venice becomes a shifting landscape of conversations, shared time, and unexpected meetings. Between pavilion visits, walks across the city, and moments spent at the gallery admiring ’s works, each day was shaped by the people passing by.
Some encounters reconnect existing friendships, while others emerge naturally through the rhythm and intensity of the weeks.

Across these days, a living network of interactions begins to form, held together by curiosity, presence, and the experience of gathering around art.

Opened today: “BLACKBOX”, a solo exhibition by Dawit Abebe, currently in residency at AKKA Project Venice.

Working across painting and mixed media, Abebe develops a layered visual language shaped by memory, perception, and the complex intersections between social, political, and human–technology dynamics. In BLACKBOX, the concept of the “black box” becomes both poetic and analytical: a metaphor for memory as fragmented, shifting, and never fully accessible. Through vibrant, stratified compositions, figures, symbols, and text emerge and dissolve, resisting fixed interpretation and inviting viewers into an open field of meaning.

Recurring elements, such as barefoot figures, suspended forms, and textual traces, act as thresholds between personal and collective histories, reflecting on identity, transformation, and the ambiguity of progress.

📅 Open Studio Visit: May 7–9, 2026
Reserve your spot via the ARTSVP link in bio.
📍 On view until June 15, 2026

Exciting news! ✨

has landed in Venice!

His distinctive perspective and practice bring a fresh energy, and we’re looking forward to seeing how his ideas will take shape within the context of Venice.

As the 13th artist in residence at AKKA Project from now on, Dawit will be taking over our Instagram, sharing glimpses of Venice through his own lens.

Stay tuned as this creative dialogue unfolds and new work begins to take shape.

Alexandre Kyungu has been selected among the artists featured in the opening of MUVEC – Casa della Contemporaneità, the new Contemporary Art Museum in Mestre.

This recognition traces back to 2023, when Alexandre took part in the AFRICA 1:1 Residency Program hosted at AKKA Project Venezia, where an initial exchange gave rise to a dialogue that has continued to unfold over time.

Today, we celebrate this achievement in Mestre’s new home for contemporary art, where Kyungu’s work is presented alongside and .

Congratulations Alexandre!

We are pleased to share that Franklyn Dzingai has been selected for the Zimbabwe Pavilion, curated by Fadzai Veronica Muchemwa, at the 2026 Biennale Arte di Venezia.

Born in 1988 in Kwekwe and based in Harare, Dzingai developed his artistic language through printmaking studies at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe Visual Art Studio, emerging as one of the few artists in Zimbabwe primarily dedicated to this medium.

Using cardboard in a reductive relief technique, he transforms humble materials into vibrant, intricately layered compositions enriched with collage and drawing.

We had the pleasure of presenting his work in 2022 in the group exhibition “African Identities” at our gallery, and we are delighted to see his practice gain this important international recognition.

We are delighted to see Kaloki Nyamai invited to participate among the 111 artists of the 61st Biennale Arte di Venezia.

Born in 1985 in Nairobi, where he lives and works, Nyamai’s multidisciplinary practice explores the relationship between ancestral memory and contemporary experience across painting, metal, video, and installation.

His collaboration with AKKA Project includes “Washa, Simple Tales in Complex Times” (2017–2018, Dubai) and “Africa & the Other 54 Countries: Focus on Kenya” (2018–2019, Dubai), key moments in his international trajectory. His work is also part of the .k.k.a.collection

We warmly congratulate him on this distinguished achievement and look forward to seeing his work during the Biennale.