Henrike Naumann, German Venice Biennale Artist, Dies at 41

Henrike Naumann, selected to represent Germany at the 2026 Venice Biennale alongside Sung Tieu, has died from a recently diagnosed cancer. Her pavilion plans are conceptually finalized and will be executed as specified. Naumann's practice employed furniture and interior design aesthetics to interrogate political histories, exemplified by her 2019 installation Ostalgie (Primal Society), which vertically mounted East German apartment furnishings to subvert domesticity. In Triangular Stories, she filmed Germans in far-right brigades, while Desolation (2014) featured a German ex-rapper who joined Islamic State. In 2021, her works showed concurrently at Kyiv's PinchukArtCentre and Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery, exhibitions halted by Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. That same year, a solo exhibition at New York's SculptureCenter used piled brown traditional furniture as a monolithic altar referencing the U.S. Capitol storming.