Still Joy: Resilience and Beauty at Palazzo Contarini Polignac for the 2026 Venice Biennale

The collateral event "Still Joy – From Ukraine into the world" opened at Palazzo Contarini Polignac during the 61st Venice Biennale, curated by Bjorn Geldhof and Oleksandra Pogrebnyak and presented by the PinchukArtCentre and the Victor Pinchuk Foundation. The exhibition explores beauty on the edge of catastrophe and the resilience of art. Works include Simone Post's candy chandeliers, Tacita Dean's hand-altered photograph of a sakura tree, a video installation by Ukrainian duo Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei showing rave parties in Kyiv before and during the Russian invasion, and Zhanna Kadyrova's rescued plants from bombed sites. Ashfika Rahman, winner of the 2024 Future Art Prize, presents "Than Para – No Land Without Us," a suspended installation of temple bells with fingerprints from eleven indigenous communities of the Chittagong Hills in Bangladesh. Ryan Gander's animatronic self-portrait philosophizes on a trash heap. Nikita Kadan's charcoal drawings depict ecstatic figures floating above building skeletons. The exhibition runs until August 1, 2026.