Frieze Magazine Nº 259 – May 2026 – The Venice Issue

Profile: Lydia Ourahmane

‘The institution is just the diving board. I never know where I’m going to land.’ From a plague island in Venice to a gold tooth embedded in her jaw, the artist traces the afterlives of migration, memory and possession.

Roundtable: Short-Circuiting Spectacle

‘There’s a sense that if the world is complicated, the body is something you can control.’ Four artists debate performance art’s rising prominence and influence across the pavilions.

Also featuring

Matthew Holman pens a thematic essay on the history of protest at the Biennale, rethinking what it might tell us about contemporary activism. Aram Moshayedi speaks with Canada’s pavilion artist Abbas Akhavan on censorship, national representation and the refusal to perform identity. In 1,500 words, Lubaina Himid tells senior editor Vanessa Peterson about her presentation at the British Pavilion, foregrounding questions of colonial displacement, translation and national mythmaking.

Columns: Next Generation

Alastair Curtis examines how Bugarin + Castle, representing the Scottish Pavilion, rework charivari tradition to confront stilted gender dynamics and trans shaming. Louisa Elderton considers how Sung Tieu approaches the fraught legacy of the German Pavilion through the lens of her own migration story. Elena Comay del Junco traces Marina Xenofontos’ evocation of Varosha’s nightclub ruins, exposing Cyprus’s histories of colonization and displacement. Eva Díaz looks at how ancient Greece inspired Natalia Lassalle-Morillo’s depictions of Puerto Rico, while Harry Burke outlines how Li Yi-Fan’s presentation at the Taiwan Pavilion deploys darkly comic MetaHuman avatars to probe AI and digital embodiment.

Finally, associate editor Angel Lambo responds to a single work by Sammy Baloji. Lydia Ourahmane contributes a ‘To Do’ list and, for the back of the magazine, associate editor Sean Burns pens a postcard from Paris.