Dana Awartani has been announced as the artist for the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, which will take place from 9 May to 22 November 2026.
Commissioned by Saudi Ministry of Culture’s Visual Arts Commission led by Dina Amin, the pavilion will respond to the theme In Minor Keys, chosen by the late Koyo Kouoh. It will be curated by Antonia Carver, the director of Art Jameel, with assistant curator Hafsa Alkhudairi.
Awartani’s practice pulls on ancestral knowledge in the fields of Islamic and Arab art to explore themes of rupture and repair. The artist’s multimedia practice reimagines the traditional aesthetic forms of the Middle East, using locally sourced materials to delve into the political history of the region, imbuing each artwork she creates with a particular sensitivity and respect for place.
This is exemplified in one of Awartani’s most celebrated and ongoing series, Come, let me heal your wounds. Let me mend your broken bones (2019–), an iteration of which was exhibited as a commission in the 2024 Venice Biennale, Stranieri Ovunque. In the work, the artist carefully darns areas on large swathes of silk dyed using medicinal healing herbs, as an act of symbolic repair on sites where conflict has taken place, the pieces of silk acting as makeshift maps.
Awartani’s recent exhibitions include a solo show entitled Standing by the Ruins at Bristol’s Arnolfini Gallery in 2025, following a previous iteration at Sfeir-Semler Gallery in Hamburg in 2024 in the same year as a solo exhibition at the Samstag Museum of Art in Australia and an inclusion in the High Line Plinth maquette exhibition, New York. Most recently, Awartani has had work showcased at the Bukhara Biennial, in Sfeir-Semler’s anniversary exhibition The Shade, Unseen Futures to Come at the Kunshaus Graz in Austria, Shared Holy Spaces at the Villa Medici in Rome and in the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Australia. Other showcases include the Sharjah Biennial 15 (2023), Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (2022), Desert X AlUla (2022), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2022), and the Kochi Muziris Biennale (2016).
Dana Awartani said: “I am deeply honored to be representing Saudi Arabia and its diverse cultural voices and communities at the Biennale Arte 2026, and I thank the Visual Arts Commission and the Ministry of Culture for this cherished opportunity. My practice is rooted in foregrounding Middle Eastern cultural histories through the revival of craft practices and the preservation of the region’s globally-important material heritage; working with my curatorial colleagues, I am thrilled to have the chance to develop a major new work for the Saudi Pavilion, in line with this theme and endeavour, and to be part of In Minor Keys.”
