Swiss Pavilion at 2026 Venice Biennale Explores Memory and Conflict in Coexistence

The Swiss Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale, titled 'The Unfinished Business of Living Together,' curated by Gianmaria Andreetta and Luca Beeler with artist Nina Wakeford, interrogates the possibility of contemporary coexistence through archival media and artistic practices. The project, realized with Miriam Laura Leonardi, Lithic Alliance, and Yul Tomatala, centers on a 1978 episode of Swiss TV program 'Telearena' that first brought marginalized LGBTQ+ voices into mainstream discourse, later expanded by the 1984 program 'Agora.' The exhibition treats these archives as active devices influencing the present, addressing systemic exclusion, social surveillance, and moral panic around traditional family. A large video installation combines archival and new visual and sound productions, extending into the pavilion's garden to create dialogue between interior and exterior. The team, composed of figures from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, presents the pavilion as an open, plural space in constant transformation.