Prazzle

We're heading to Venice for the 61st La Biennale di Venezia, and we know the scale can be overwhelming. With nearly 100 countries participating, we've curated an essential guide to the pavilions you shouldn't miss. This year's Biennale unfolds under the vision of the late Koyo Kuoh and the curatorial theme "In Minor Keys."

We'll be on the ground during preview week. If you'd like to connect or collaborate, reach out.

Biennale Dates
Preview: May 5–8
General Opening: May 9–November 22

Here are some highlighted pavilions to watch:

Predicting History: Testing Translation
📍 British Pavilion, represented by

Ruin curated by .reinhardt, represented by and Henrike Naumann
📍 German Pavilion

Shame Parade by
📍 Scotland Pavilion

In Another Man's Yard, artists .munroe.studio
📍 Bahamas Pavilion

The Ear is the Eye of the Soul
📍 Vatican Pavilion, curated by

A Place in the Sun: Staging the Unknown by
📍 Albania Pavilion

May your tears never dry, you who weep over stones
📍 Saudi Arabia Pavilion

Predicting History: Testing Translation, artists
📍 The Nordic Pavilion

Grass Babies: Moon Babies, artist .arakawa.nash
📍 Japan Pavilion curated by and

🔗 See the full guide https://www.prazzlearts.com/editorial/venice-biennale-explained-15-national-pavilions-to-watch-at-the-61st-edition-in-minor-keys-2026

Exhibition of the Day: Seeing in Blue by Oyè Diran at

“Blue for me is more than a color, it’s a language. It represents emotional depth, spirituality, and the layered journey between light and darkness.” - Photographer and Visual Artist

SEEING IN BLUE marks Oyè Diran’s debut solo exhibition with Band of Vices, placing his practice within the gallery’s ongoing commitment to artists who engage deeply with identity, history, and cultural expression.

The exhibition brings together two interconnected bodies of work, creating a sustained dialogue between self and others, presence and absence, and the physical and the spiritual.

Diran’s signature aesthetic defined by the duality of his upbringing between Lagos, Nigeria, and New York, emerges through minimal compositions enriched by deeply saturated color. His works feel both intimate and timeless, drawing the viewer into precisely composed moments that move between stillness and emotional depth.

’Seeing in Blue‘ is on view until 16 May

🔗 Learn More https://www.prazzlearts.com/exhibitions/269/seeing_in_blue_by_oy_diran_at_band_of_vices

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Exhibition of the Day: Gucci Memoria at Chiostri di San Simpliciano

At Fuorisalone 2026, presents Gucci Memoria, curated by . The exhibition follows the House’s 105-year history, starting from Guccio Gucci’s early days in London and the opening of his Florentine workshop, through its growth in the 1970s and 1980s, to its place today as a global fashion house.

At the center are twelve large tapestries that map out this journey, including key moments and iconic designs like the Jackie 1961 and Bamboo 1947 bags. The story moves through different creative eras shaped by Tom Ford, Frida Giannini, Alessandro Michele, and Sabato De Sarno, before arriving in the present under Demna. Around this, the space opens into a garden inspired by the Flora print and small details like vending machines serving drinks from Gucci Giardino.

Gucci Memoria is on view until April 26
📍 Chiostri di San Simpliciano, Milan

🔗 Learn More https://www.prazzlearts.com/exhibitions/265/gucci_memoria_an_exhibition_curated_by_denma

📷 Images courtesy of

At , brings A Puffy Summer Takeover to .design.week 2026.

Moncler opens the Gallery with its new summer collection. In the Project Room, Linde Freya Tangelder presents Fluid Re-Collection in collaboration with Cassina. Visionnaire shows a new capsule with NM3 in the Pop-Up, while Imperfettolab takes over the Mezzanine with an installation.

In-store, KINRADEN presents its new Stilos collection, and in the garden, Garage Italia Customs collaborates with Mariaflora for Palazzo Avino, with a branded “Spiaggina” also moving through the city.

A full week of different worlds meeting in one place.
On view until April 28

📷 courtesy and

.design.week 2026 opened April 20, across Milan. As the global design world gathers in the city, the week transforms everyday spaces into ideas about how we live, build, and share the world.

With the Salone del Mobile and Fuorisalone unfolding across the city, this year’s edition reflects the scale and energy of design today. Guided by two themes, A Matter of Salone and Be the Project, the focus shifts to material, process, and the role we all play in shaping the world around us.

Here are some of our must-see exhibitions and installations:
The Paper Log: Shell and Core by Issey Miyake
📍 Issey Miyake, Via Bagutta 12

When Apricots Blossom by ACDF
📍 Palazzo Citterio, Via Brera 12

Hermès, Palladion d'Hermès Vase
📍 La Pelota Jai Alai, Via Palermo 10

Wonderland of the Monsters

📍 Via San Marco 26

Metamorphosis in Motion by Lina Ghotmeh
📍 Dover Street Market Paris, Marais District, Paris

Over and Over and Over and Over by 6AM
📍 Centro Balneare Romano (Piscina Romano), Via Ampère 24

L'Appartmento by Artemest
📍 Palazzo Donizetti, Via Gaetano Donizetti 48

Polish Modernism: The Fight for Beauty .foundation
📍 Torre Velasca, Piazza Velasca 3/5, 16th Floor

Renaissance of the Real by USM x Snøhetta
📍Fondazione Luigi Rovati, Corso Venezia 5

Milan Design Week 2026 runs until April 26

🔗 See the full guide https://www.prazzlearts.com/editorial/15-must-see-art-exhibitions-and-installations-at-milan-design-week-2026

Exhibition of the Day: Polish Modernism: The Fight for Beauty at the .foundation

What does it mean to fight for beauty?
In 20th-century Poland, designers and artists worked through difficult conditions, using simple materials but holding on to big ideas about form, function, and everyday life.

Presented inside the iconic Torre Velasca, the exhibition brings together historical works and contemporary pieces, showing how these ideas have continued to shape Polish design today. Furniture, objects, and artworks sit side by side, connecting past and present through a shared way of thinking.

Rather than separating beauty from use, the works here show how the two can exist together. Beyond design being just how things look, it is also a way of improving how people live. Through this, the exhibition tells a bigger story. In Poland, modernism was not just a style. It was a way of building identity, and a way of staying connected to a wider cultural world.

The exhibition is curated by and .amaga. Exhibition design by

📍 On view at Torre Velasca, Piazza Velasca 3/5, 16th floor, Milano till 26th April
🔗 Learn More https://www.prazzlearts.com/exhibitions/261/polish_modernism_the_fight_for_beauty_at_visteria_foundation

Where are the art critics?

Every year, the art world looks ahead to Art Basel Miami Beach and Art Miami. We see the fun highlights, headlines and photos on social media, but what actually gets lost amidst the buzz?

Art writer and curator Veronica Pesantes-Vallejo argues the issue isn’t a lack of art, but a lack of sustained critical analysis.

What is being shown is one thing. What is being sold, and how it is understood, is another. Through Miami Art Hang, she calls for slower looking, deeper context, and more rigorous conversations around what is being presented and why it matters.

Read her insights from Miami here https://www.prazzlearts.com/editorial/where-is-art-criticism-veronica-pesantes-vallejo-on-depth-and-critical-engagement-in-miami-and-beyond

Opportunities on Prazzle this week ✨
Funding, exhibitions, and career-shaping opportunities for artists at every stage.

CCA Travel Scholarship for Emerging Artists and Curators
Travel scholarship offering JPY 200,000 funding, return airfare, and research opportunity in Japan for emerging artists, curators, architects, and designers.
Deadline: Apr 24, 2026

40th Chelsea International Fine Art Competition
$85,000+ prizes, NYC exhibition, cash awards, magazine features, and global recognition for artists worldwide.
Deadline: Apr 28, 2026

Open Call for Artists at Carnelian Art Gallery
Exhibition, curatorial review, and collaboration opportunities for emerging and established artists globally. Deadline: Rolling

Art Town Now Open Call for Artists and Creative People .now
Collaborations, public art opportunities, and inclusion in Artown Now’s global artist database for visibility and projects.
Deadline: May 3, 2026

Studio Museum in Harlem’s 2026-27 Artist-in-Residence Program ($50,000)
$50,000 stipend, studio space, mentorship, professional development, research support, and culminating exhibition with publication for artists worldwide.
Deadline: May 18, 2026.

OPEN CALL: Zeitz Museum Of Contemporary Art Africa & UWC Museum Fellowship Programme
Hands-on museum experience, professional training, and BA Honours degree for emerging African art and museum professionals.
Deadline: June 30, 2026

Blu Sky Artist Award ($1,000 in Awards)
J$500 cash prizes, interviews, press features, catalogue inclusion, certificates, and lasting global visibility for artists worldwide.
Deadline: Aug 15, 2026

Call for Grant Applications for International Projects with Austrian Contemporary art in 2027 .art
Grants supporting international exhibitions, funding production of new artworks and projects featuring Austrian and Austria-based artists at global institutions.
Deadline: Sept 15, 2026

Save this, share with an artist, and explore more opportunities https://www.prazzlearts.com/opportunities

Flacking — .flacking

Pothole on the streets, before and after. The anonymous artist known as Ememem has been filling cracks, potholes and crumbling sidewalks with intricate ceramic tile mosaics since 2016, working in the middle of the night, without permits, calling himself "the pavement surgeon" and "a sidewalk poet, a son of bitumen."

He calls the practice "flacking" from the French flaque, meaning puddle. Each piece is site-specific, shaped to fit the exact wound in the road. The work draws a clear line to kintsugi, the Japanese tradition of repairing broken objects with gold, the idea that damage, made visible and beautiful, becomes stronger than what was there before.

The city of Lyon has since commissioned Ememem to design an entire network of bicycle paths. His identity remains unknown.

All images courtesy of .flacking

Exhibition of the Day: Marina Abramović: Balkan Erotic Epic at (Berlin)

returns to Berlin with Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition, her first major solo show in the city since the 1990s. The exhibition brings together new and historical works that look closely at ritual, the body, death, and resistance, showing how performance can hold memory, politics, and emotion at the same time.

These performances bring together music, gesture, and storytelling to reflect on a period of change after the death of Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito, weaving together personal and collective memory, mourning, and cultural ritual across the Balkans.

📍The exhibition is on view at Gropius Bau, Berlin until 23rd August, 2026.

🔗 Learn More https://www.prazzlearts.com/exhibitions/254/balkan_erotic_epic_the_exhibition_by_marina_abramovi_at_gropius_bau

During his secret detention in 2011, was held for 81 days with no contact, no privacy, and no acknowledgement from authorities that he was even there. When a soldier finally came to sew a button back onto his trousers, it had taken weeks of approval.

After more than two months, a soldier entered the cell with a needle and thread. In front of a surveillance camera, he carefully sewed the button back onto Ai Weiwei’s trousers, every movement being watched. The stitching was uneven and slightly off, but the act itself became heavy with meaning. Even something as small as a button had required a long chain of bureaucratic approval, and when it finally arrived, it felt like a rare and significant gesture.

Now, Ai Weiwei returns to that moment in Sewing a Button, a 24-hour live performance inside a full-scale reconstruction of his prison cell (7.2 by 3.6 metres), set within the vast Hall at Factory International’s Aviva Studios. Audiences admitted in two-hour slots will watch him sleep, eat, move, and carry out daily routines, while actors stage interrogations.

The performance runs alongside Button Up!, his largest site-specific exhibition to date, featuring new works including flags made from hundreds of thousands of buttons and a vast toy-brick mosaic exploring power, conflict, and global systems.

📍 Aviva Studios, Home of
🗓 5pm, 3 July - 5pm, 4 July 2026
Button Up! runs 2 July - 6 September 2026

🔗 Learn more https://www.prazzlearts.com/editorial/one-button-81-days-24-hours-ai-weiwei-restages-his-secret-detention-in-manchester