Curated by FITZ & CO · 6 exhibitions
The Regional Spotlight: Asia brings together a selection of exhibitions from across the Asian region. While diverse in form, geography, and institutional context, they share a set of broadly resonant concerns around time, material practice, and the lived experience of cultural and historical continuity. Rather than defining a single position or theme, the selection reflects the range and complexity of contemporary artistic practices emerging from Asia today, where artists and curators work across different histories, disciplines, and traditions.
“Curated by Prof. Dr. Apinan Poshyananda, The Spirits of Maritime Crossing 2026 brings together artists from Southeast Asia, as well as artists from Ireland, Serbia, and beyond. The exhibition explores themes of identity, displacement, diaspora, memory, and spiritual resilience in a world shaped by migration and global transformation. Spanning performance, film, installation, painting, and sculpture, the exhibition reflects on how artists transform shared experiences of loss, rupture, and transition into poetic forms of connection. Highlights include new collaborative works and a short film created especially for the exhibition, directed by Prof. Dr. Apinan Poshyananda. Co-hosted with Thai Beverage Public Company Limited (ThaiBev) and One Bangkok, the exhibition will be held from 9 May to 2 August 2026 within the historic rooms of Palazzo Rocca Contarini Corfù.”
Palazzo Rocca Contarini Corfù · Curated by Dr. Apinan Poshyananda for the Bangkok Art Biennale Foundation, twenty artists from Southeast Asia, Ireland, and Serbia — including Marina Abramović and Pichet Klunchun — work across performance, film, and ceramics as inspired by their encounters with diaspora, migration, and ritual crossing. Staged at Palazzo Rocca Contarini Corfù.
“Renowned artist Wallace Chan will unveil Vessels of Other Worlds, his most ambitious and visceral project to date, in a landmark dual-site exhibition across Venice and Shanghai in 2026, coinciding with his 70th birthday. Curated by James Putnam, this major exhibition introduces a striking new series of monumental titanium sculptures, expanding both the spatial and conceptual dimensions of Chan's practice. The first exhibition opens on 8 May 2026 at the Chapel of Santa Maria della Pietà, coinciding with the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2026. The second and parallel exhibition will open at the Long Museum (West Bund), Shanghai, on 18 July 2026.”
Santa Maria della Pietà · 'Vessels of Other Worlds' installs three biomorphic titanium vessels — referencing the Catholic Olea Sancta and Bosch's 'Garden of Earthly Delights' — on the altar of the Pietà chapel, with a video triptych live-feeding the show's twin half at Shanghai's Long Museum, marking Wallace Chan's 70th.
“Twelve monochrome panels arranged as a constellation alongside carved stone steles, marking Ding Yi's pivot from the fluorescent canvases of the past decade; staged in dialogue with its venue, Carlo Scarpa's Area.”
Fondazione Querini Stampalia · Twelve monochrome panels arranged as a constellation alongside carved stone steles, marking Ding Yi's pivot from the fluorescent canvases of the past decade. 'Cosmotechnics: Ding Yi as a Planetary Code' is staged in dialogue with the Area Scarpa wing of Fondazione Querini Stampalia — title borrowed from philosopher Yuk Hui — curated by Alfredo Cramerotti and Auronda Scalera.
“Su Xiaobai's Alchemical Universe, presented by the Su Xiaobai Foundation in collaboration with LACMA. Installed across the historic rooms of Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel, the exhibition presents 35 works, from the artist's first lacquer experiments in 2003 to recent paintings created especially for Venice. A central focus is Su Xiaobai's newest series, Niao Niao, a Chinese poetic phrase embodying sensations of transience and evanescence.”
Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel · Thirty-five works tracing Su Xiaobai's two-decade transfiguration from oil paint to natural lacquer — a 7,000-year-old Chinese material historically reserved for ritual practice — implemented here in the creation of post-industrial abstraction. Anchored by the centrepiece 'Niao Niao' at Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel, presented by the Su Xiaobai Foundation in collaboration with LACMA.
“Titled Liberation Space: Fortress/Nest and curated by Binna Choi, the presentation sees Goen Choi and Hyeree Ro transform the Korea Pavilion into a living monument, or "Liberation Space", through their unique and diverging sculptural practices. The title references the three-year period (1945-48) that followed Korea's liberation from Japanese rule, with the physical location of the Korea Pavilion between the pavilions of Japan and Germany adding a layered historical resonance.”
Korea (Republic of) Pavilion · Curator Binna Choi, with artists Goen Choi and Hyeree Ro, reframes the Korea Pavilion as a living monument to 'liberation space' (haebang gonggan) — the 1945–48 window between Japanese colonial rule and Korea's partition, read here as an unfinished, durational practice extending through the 2024–25 assemblies in the wake of South Korea's illegal Martial Law decree. Two intertwining sculptures anchor the exhibition: Goen Choi's 'Meridian,' built from cut and torn copper pipes, and Hyeree Ro's 'Bearing,' constructed from thousands of wax-coated organza circles around stationary wood and clay structures. Programmed alongside a historic collaboration with the Japan Pavilion.
“The exhibition brings together 10 Japanese artists whose practices center on slow, sustained tactile engagement with materials. The show is curated by Akimoto Yuji, former artistic director of Benesse Art Site Naoshima, with exhibition design by Kulapat Yantrasast of WHY Architecture. Rather than treating craft as a separate category, this exhibition uses a craft-based approach to rethink contemporary art itself, grounded in deep engagement with materiality and the gradual accumulation of gestures over time. It offers a quiet yet resolute inquiry into dominant value systems that prioritize speed, visibility, and immediate circulation. Works on view span ceramics, lacquer, metal, textiles, and glass, including Ritsue Mishima's luminous sculptures created in collaboration with Murano artisans.”
Palazzo Pisani Santa Marina · Artists from GO FOR KOGEI — a Hokuriku-region (Ishikawa, Toyama, Fukui) craft project led by curator Yuji Akimoto — present what he calls 'sensory fieldwork': objects rendered in clay, grass, urushi, and fabric that visibly transform across the seven months of the Biennale. Staged at Palazzo Pisani Santa Marina, the exhibition slows the act of making against an accelerated society.
