Ecuador Pavilion at Venice Biennale: Tawna & Oscar's Emotional Accumulation

Adilson De Oliveira reviews the Ecuadorian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, featuring the collective Tawna (seven-member anti-colonial collective of Sápara, Kichwa, and Mestizo artists) and artist Oscar Santillán. The pavilion presents video works like 'Llaki' (2026) and 'Kawashima' (2026) by Tawna, which explore memory, grief, queer and Warmipangui experience in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and militarization as colonial language. Santillán's sculptures, including 'Voyager' (a rainforest shirt repaired with meteorite fragments) and 'Placenta' (computer motherboards resembling geological landscapes), complement the video works. The review highlights the pavilion's emotional slowness, resistance to immediate legibility, and its opening with mezcal and rum instead of prosecco. De Oliveira draws parallels to Guillermo Gómez-Peña's 'Poyesis Genética' and reflects on personal connections to militarized masculinity in South Africa. The pavilion is described as free, open to the public, and emotionally impactful, with a focus on accumulation rather than explanation.