Cyprus Pavilion Inauguration today, 4–7pm. Music by Panagiotis Mina (@therealpannybrown ) / listen across the canal at 7pm.
Image: Marina Xenofontos, Threads, 2026, detail. Copper, steel, motors, electrical board. 21 elements; each 61 x 44 x 48 cm. Photo: Jacopo La Forgia
Biennale Arte 2026
Marina Xenofontos
It rests to the bones
Tuesday—Sunday
Summer Hours (May—September): 11am—7pm
Autumn Hours (October—November): 10am—6pm
Associazione Culturale Spiazzi
Calle del Pestrin, 3865
30122 Venice
Commissioner: Dr. Ioanna Hadjicosti
Artist: Marina Xenofontos
Collaborating Artist: Panagiotis Mina
Curator: Kyle Dancewicz
Coordinator: Dr. Stella Sophocleous
Production Manager: Sara Maggioni
Site Coordinator: Giovanni Giacomo Paolin
Research, Archive, and Development: Paola Shiamtani
Design and Production Assistance: Alexia Rontionova
Graphic Design: Julie Peeters
Design Assistance: Laura Martens
Design and Fabrication: Manos Vordonarakis, François Junod, Ezer Longinus, Mauro Pasqualin
Translation: Francesco Tenaglia, Ioli Kavakou, Aliki Theodosiou, Yağış Bey, Seta Astreou Karides, Giannis Moutsis, Aycan Garip
The participation of the Republic of Cyprus in Biennale Arte 2026 is organized and supported by the Department of Contemporary Culture of the Deputy Ministry of Culture – the Republic of Cyprus.
“It rests to the bones” is supported by PSI Foundation, Patrick Collins, Kerenidis Pepe, A. Andreades Family, Cherry Cheng, Helena Czernecka and Igor Czernecki, James Freedman and Anna Kissin, Angie and Yanni Koulakoglou, Natalia Kurakina and Georg Zett, Amalia Mytilineou, Pylon Art & Culture, and Anastasia Sgoumpopoulou.
@labiennale
Friday, 10 April 2026 on Radio Alhara (@radioalhara ) at 9am Bethlehem Time. Link in bio.
“You presented the most beautiful. And the most beautiful is the wound on your chest.” A mix of influences, research and raw material.
A new audio work by Panagiotis Mina (@therealpannybrown ) of Pyrgatory Studios (@pyrgatory.studios ) in collaboration with Marina Xenofontos (@afictionalastronaut ) for “It rests to the bones,” upcoming at the Cyprus Pavilion — 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.
Transcriptions and translations from folk song variants sung by the Ayisilaou sisters — Amalia Strati, Rebecca Hadjipapa, Anthulla Fylachtou, Chrystalla Pittaka — in Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot dialects.
Recorded in Koilani, Cyprus, 2020
To be presented live in Venice on Thursday, 7 May 2026, 7pm at the Cyprus Pavilion.
It rests to the bones
Marina Xenofontos
Curated by Kyle Dancewicz (@kdancew )
✨ Cyprus Pavilion – Venice Biennale 2026✨
It rests to the bones, Marina Xenofontos curated by Kyle Dancewicz.
For the Cyprus Pavilion of the 61st Biennale di Venezia, Marina Xenofontos will exhibit works in sculpture, sound, and film that register cadences of social life, religious transgression, and cultural endurance.
Over the last fifteen years, Xenofontos has made artworks that store and retrieve information. Her works across media are entries into and products of what the artist has called an “unconditional archive,” or
an accumulation of interrelated ideas, fragments of political memory, physical objects, and social conditions that undergird the present.
Xenofontos’ new and re-presented works grow from a study of anti-spectacular machines, motors, and automata, and from an idiosyncratic sense for data and metadata – the collected debris of experience that clings to life. As heavy as its recursions could potentially feel, Xenofontos’ work instead generates an ineffable, sometimes shimmering, escape from the baggage of lived or almost-lived history, followed by its inevitable transfiguration and return.
📅 May 6–8: Preview 📅 May 9 – Nov 22: Public opening 📍 Associazione Culturale Spiazzi, Venice
