Alfredo Jaar's 'The End of the World' Cube at Venice Biennale 2026

At the 2026 Venice Art Biennale, Alfredo Jaar presents 'The End of the World (2023-2024)', a four-centimetre-square cube made from ten critical minerals: cobalt, rare earths, copper, tin, nickel, lithium, manganese, coltan, germanium, and platinum. These metals are essential for technologies central to both the green transition and warfare, and their extraction carries severe environmental and human costs, including strip mining, deep-sea mining, and plans for lunar mining. Placed in the center of a cathedral-like space in the Arsenale, the cube frames the architecture as part of the work, condensing global tragedies into a precise object of pathos and poetry. The piece was documented by VernissageTV on May 6, 2026, in Venice, Italy. The official description was provided by Allyn Aglaïa.