Gala Porras-Kim Examines Museum Custodianship at Venice Biennale

The late Koyo Kouoh (1967–2025), art director of this year's edition, selected Colombian-Korean-American artist Gala Porras-Kim for the Special Project at the Pavilion of Applied Arts in Venice. This marks the 10th collaboration between the V&A and la Biennale. Porras-Kim's installation explores how museum practices—curation, conservation, classification—are never neutral but actively shape the meaning of objects. Her works include large-scale drawings of decayed fabric fragments from the V&A's Stein collection (200 BC–1200 AD), a cube of dust from the MET's deinstalled Rockefeller wing cases, a pointillist canvas of mold spores from the British Museum, and a monochrome using frass from the Fowler Museum after moth damage. She also highlights the theft of over 2,000 objects by V&A security guard John Andrew Nevins, including a Duncan Grant fabric his wife turned into curtains. Porras-Kim brings deaccessioned objects from Young V&A to Venice, placing them in a vitrine where sunlight will bleach the paper over the Biennale's run. The exhibition is on view from 9 May to 22 November 2026 at the Sale d'Armi A, Arsenale.