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Chiara Camoni's Con te con tutto, Italian Pavilion, Biennale Arte 2026

La Biennale di Venezia (Giardini & Arsenale)Castello

Italian Pavilion: Con te con tutto – Chiara Camoni

Last chance9 May 2026 – 22 November 2026€30

Chiara Camoni fills the Tese delle Vergini at the Arsenale with 24 life-sized sculptures woven from plants, flowers, plastics and debris, curated by Cecilia Canziani.

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You walk into near-darkness and make out a crowd: 24 terracotta women, a little taller than you, studded with grasses, stones, leaves and plastic scraps Chiara Camoni picked up near her studio. One of them holds two ceramic bowls by Fausto Melotti.

The second of the two Tese delle Vergini is the opposite, all daylight with the windows and door open. It holds a half-built village of furniture sculptures in verdigris, a little house, a tent, a bench. In the middle, a Venus and three Odalisques recline beside a recycled plastic floor that shines like water. Venice spent billions on MOSE to keep the water out; Camoni built a floor that only looks flooded.

Finestre sull'Arte's Federico Giannini found "remarkable poetic intensity", but warned that its calculated disorder can become a "cacophony that repels more than it welcomes". It's in the Arsenale, covered by the €30 Biennale ticket, Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 6pm, until 22 November.

Look for

  • The forest of Sisters

    In the dim first room, 24 slightly larger-than-life terracotta figures, built up in coils, stand among you with leaves, stones and plastic fragments pressed into their bodies.

  • The figure with Melotti's bowls

    Look for the female figure holding two ceramic bowls by Fausto Melotti in her hands, one of several pieces where Camoni works in other artists' objects.

  • The plastic lake

    One Venus and three Odalisques recline on either side of a large recycled plastic floor whose surface reflects the daylight like water.

  • The amphora and the film

    Alice Rohrwacher's video What Remains, reworking material from her film La Chimera, is set against a 7th-century BC amphora lent by the Rovati Foundation.

  • The square facing the garden

    At the heart of the bright second room, seats converge on a small plaza that looks out through the open door to the garden's large trees.

Good for

  • Going Solo
  • Nerding Out
  • Out-Of-Town Guests

Skip if

You find cluttered rooms tiring: Finestre sull'Arte's critic called the deliberate disorder a cacophony.

Also at La Biennale di Venezia (Giardini & Arsenale)

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