The European Cultural Centre Italy has announced the finalists of the ECC Awards, presented as part of Personal Structures – Confluences, the eighth edition of its international contemporary exhibition, running in parallel with the Venice Art Biennale. Running in Venice from 9 May to 22 November 2026 across Palazzo Bembo, Palazzo Mora and the Marinaressa Gardens, the exhibition provides the backdrop for the awards, which celebrate artistic practices engaging with the show's theme, Confluences, through research, interdisciplinarity and dialogue with place. The winners will be announced on 22 November 2026, during the exhibition's closing event.
The ECC Awards are divided into five categories, each highlighting artistic practices that transform diversity into forms of connection, exchange and shared knowledge, placing research, interdisciplinarity and a deep sense of place at the heart of the Venetian context. These are: Artistic Interpretation of the Theme: Confluences, dedicated to practices engaging directly with the exhibition's theme; Research & Curatorial Project, recognising research-based and archival practices; Cross-Disciplinary Project, bringing together practices that cross the fields of art, science and design; Emerging Practices, presenting new voices within the contemporary art scene; and Space & Context Project, focusing on site-specific and spatial interventions.
The selected projects come from 17 countries, including Japan, the United States, the Netherlands, China, South Korea, France, Pakistan, Nepal, Israel, Bahrain, Canada and the United Kingdom. The shortlisted projects will be evaluated by an international jury of professionals from the fields of contemporary art, curating, publishing and cultural institutions: Nargess Banks (United Kingdom), writer and Editorial Director specialising in art, design and visual culture; Jesús Alberto Flores (Mexico), cultural strategist supporting emerging artists and contemporary cultural initiatives; Rahul Gudipudi (India), Founder and Director of the ke—na— artists' initiative; Euijung McGillis (Canada), Assistant Curator at the National Gallery of Canada; and Anouska Phizacklea (Australia), Director of the Museum of Australian Photography and former Co-President of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival.
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8 National Pavilion Highlights from the 2026 Venice Art BiennaleLearn more about the shortlisted projects below, with descriptions provided by the organisation.
Artistic Interpretation of the Theme: Confluences
Relational Logic – Beyond Dualism, a World Reconnected / B-OWND
B-OWND is a Japanese curatorial platform exploring the relationships among art, craftsmanship and contemporary technologies, overcoming traditional separations between art and craft, function and contemplation. Within Personal Structures – Confluences, the project Relational Logic – Beyond Dualism, a World Reconnected develops a relational vision of artistic practice based on connection and interdependence between people, materials and contexts. Founded in 2019, B-OWND operates internationally by promoting hybrid practices and interdisciplinary collaborations, including digital tools and blockchain technologies.
nomos (cube Venezia) / Martha Russo
Martha Russo is an artist from the United States whose sculptural and installation-based practice, primarily rooted in ceramics, explores the relationship between matter, perception, and the natural world. Her works create complex visual ecosystems that invite a sensory and immersive experience, beyond a purely formal interpretation. In the project nomos (cube Venezia), she presents a large porcelain installation intertwining organic elements and abstract structures, generating a slow and perceptive engagement with space. Russo studied developmental biology and psychology at Princeton University and earned an MFA from the University of Colorado Boulder, where she currently teaches.
Intimate Unthinkables / Adrian Parr Zaretsky and Liu Shiming
Adrian Parr Zaretsky and Liu Shiming, with the support of the Liu Shiming Art Foundation, present Intimate Unthinkables, an installation that connects everyday female experiences across different geographical and cultural contexts. The project explores labour, care, vulnerability and resistance as a shared language across times and places. The work brings together Liu Shiming's sculpture, rooted in Chinese tradition, with A.Z.'s contemporary practice, which addresses gender-based violence and social transformation. Adrian Parr is an Australian philosopher, artist and academic who holds the UNESCO Chair on Water and Human Settlements. Liu Shiming (1926–2010) was one of the leading Chinese sculptors of the 20th century.
Selection of works from the series a moment we shared / G-sim Seyeon and BALC
Japanese contemporary art gallery BALC presents G-sim Seyeon in Venice. Seyeon is a South Korean artist working between painting and performative gestures, with research focused on the instant and the perception of time. His practice explores the "moment" as a fluid unit in which past, present, and future overlap within a single sensitive flow. Through material and gestural painting, he translates energy, transformation, and impermanence into dynamic images connected to natural phenomena such as waves and light. His research emerges from personal experiences and a reflection influenced by Buddhist thought on the present moment.
Cross-Disciplinary Project
Carte de France Divisée en 86 départements and Asie Mineure / Stephens Tapestry Studio and William Kentridge
Johannesburg-based Stephens Tapestry Studio, which specialises in contemporary tapestry produced in collaboration with international artists, presents two tapestries from the Porter series in collaboration with William Kentridge: Carte de France Divisée en 86 départements and Asie Mineure. The series explores themes of migration and passage as forms of carrying memory and identity. The works of Stephens Tapestry Studio translate collages and drawings into hand-woven tapestries produced through traditional techniques between South Africa and Eswatini.
Breathing Light / A+N Studio
A+N Studio develops objects and installations based on research into wellbeing, translating environmental psychology and lighting design into sensory experiences. Breathing Light is a luminous object born of research that transforms the rhythm of deep breathing into a spatial experience. The result is an interactive light environment designed to support stress reduction and mindfulness. The project originates from educational contexts and integrates physiological data with participatory design. A+N Studio was founded by Dutch designers Alissa van Asseldonk and Nienke Bongers and operates across the fields of design, research, and behavioural sciences.
Becoming You / Geraldine Ondrizek & Shizuko Takahashi
United States artist and educator Geraldine Ondrizek and Shizuko Takahashi, a Japanese physician and bioethics researcher at the National University of Singapore, collaborate on Becoming You, an art–science project that visualises human development from the cell to birth through painting and storytelling. Their work translates biological processes into images on Japanese scrolls, combining genetics, medicine and visual language.
WE ARE INCONSOLABLE / ORLAN
ORLAN is a French artist and a pioneer of body art and performance, whose multidisciplinary practice explores the intersections of the body, technology and digital media. A key figure in performance art, she uses the human body as an artistic medium to question themes of identity, beauty, gender and power. For Personal Structures – Confluences, ORLAN presents WE ARE INCONSOLABLE, a project that transforms pain and anger into a critical and political form through AI-generated images and painterly interventions. The work reinterprets the iconography of suffering as an act of resistance against systemic violence and power structures.
Research & Curatorial Project
Tanka Tales: Thread as Archive / Mahwish Chishty
Mahwish Chishty presents Tanka Tales: Thread as Archive, a textile installation that uses embroidery as a living archive of memory, women's labour and cultural heritage. Chishty, whose practice is particularly focused on folk traditions and women's craftsmanship, involves Pakistani artisans in the project, weaving together text and thread into a non-linear narrative between tradition and contemporaneity. Mahwish Chishty is based in the United States and works across miniature painting, installation, and conceptual practices.
ADEMA University School
ADEMA University School, a prestigious higher education institution located in Palma de Mallorca, presents a selection of works by students from its Fine Arts programme, shaped by research, experimentation and critical reflection on contemporary issues. The works address social, political and environmental themes through different languages and materials. ADEMA University School is an international academic institution with a strong focus on artistic production and education.
Atlantis / Erika A. Kiss from Princeton Research Film Studio
Princeton Research Film Studio, directed by Erika A. Kiss, explores cinema in the age of automation and artificial intelligence, proposing a return to an immersive and "craft-based" dimension of moving images. The project combines philosophy, science, and visual storytelling through installations and projection devices. Princeton Research Film Studio is the research studio of Princeton University, New Jersey (USA), dedicated to cinema as an interdisciplinary language.
Ester Hernández: An Ecological Memoir / Jennifer Garcia Peacock
Jennifer Garcia Peacock is a United States curator and scholar working in the field of environmental humanities, with a focus on Chicanx and Latinx artistic practices. Her research bridges art history, cultural studies, and environmental practices. She presents a project dedicated to artist Ester Hernández, creating a visual archive around her ecological and political practice. Through archival materials and hybrid forms of research, the project explores the intersections between art, environmental activism, and Chicanx cultural memory.
Emerging Practices
Quiet Between Us / Desmond Beach
Desmond Beach is a New York-based artist and educator working across fibre, performance, and installation. His research addresses the legacies of racial violence and practices of memory within the African diaspora. He has developed a ritual-based approach to artistic practice influenced by spiritual and community traditions.
Amelia Galgon
Amelia Galgon is a Philadelphia-born artist based in New York. Her practice moves between contemporary figuration and printmaking, exploring the relationship among the queer body and domestic space. Through constantly transforming figures placed within home interiors, she investigates how queer corporeality challenges conventions and redefines the reciprocal relationship between bodies and the spaces that contain them. Galgon earned a dual degree in Art and Computer Science from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (USA), and has received several recognitions, including the Excellence in Watercolor Award from the Philadelphia Sketch Club (2021).
Dream Museum / Oona Frost
Oona Frost is a Dutch artist whose creative identity is in constant transformation. She uses installations, inflatable sculptures and interactive media to investigate themes of selfhood, authorship and speculative futures. Her research focuses on human evolution, neuroplasticity and biohacking, intertwining scientific and mythopoetic imaginaries. At the centre of her work is the Dream Museum, an archive of hybrid creatures and post-human scenarios. Her practice explores the shifting boundaries between body, technology and consciousness through immersive experiences.
Chhyake / Blurring the Lines and Jyoti Shrestha
Blurring the Lines presents Chhyake by Jyoti Shrestha, a Nepali artist and photographer and one of the winners of the eponymous 2025 award. Her research develops through self-portraiture, collage, and narrative practices centred on the body. With Chhyake, a term for scars caused by a skin condition, the artist reinterprets the bodily mark as an act of reclamation, presenting the body as an archive of memory, pain and resistance. The project intertwines photography and text to create an archive of resilience and self-determination.
Space & Context Project
The Forest for the Trees / Lynn Christine Kelly
Lynn Christine Kelly is a Canadian artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture, and installation, exploring the relationship between nature and perception. She creates immersive environments that evoke forest ecosystems through suspended textiles, light, and sound. Her works transform exhibition spaces into sensory and contemplative experiences. The project The Forest for the Trees reconstructs a forest as a perceptual and symbolic environment. Her practice explores the connection between human beings and nature, as well as the spiritual dimension of landscapes.
Étoiles-en-Feu / Studio Waldemeyer
Studio Waldemeyer is a London-based design studio specialising in light art and immersive technologies. It presents a site-specific light installation comprising 111 elements that transform a corridor into an immersive experience. The work reinterprets the candle as a contemporary symbol of memory and perception.
Inhabited Created / Rashid Al Khalifa
Rashid Al Khalifa creates spatial installations based on permeable grids that visitors can navigate, transforming light and movement into integral elements of the artwork. His research reflects on contemporary architectural and social systems; his most recent installations investigate transparency and perceptual structures through embodied experiences. Rashid Al Khalifa is a Bahraini artist and patron, educated in the United Kingdom, active in painting and installation. He is the founder of the RAK Art Foundation.
Holding the Fragments / Pnina Afik
Pnina Afik is an Israeli multidisciplinary artist working with sculpture and installation. Her research focuses on fragmentation, traumatic memory and processes of reconstruction, using industrial materials such as iron, ropes and technical fabrics to create physical narratives of memory. Holding the Fragments visualises the reconstruction of memory as an imperfect and active process of assembly.
Other recent projects at the intersection of art and architecture include the artwork and architectural project by Tatsuo Miyajima titled "Sea of Time – TOHOKU," a permanent museum to house Miyajima's artwork designed by Japanese architect Tsuyoshi Tane of Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects (ATTA). Street artist JR recently installed an immersive inflatable cave on Paris' Pont Neuf in tribute to Christo and Jeanne-Claude, in honour of the couple's 1985 work "The Pont Neuf Wrapped." Concéntrico, the large-scale laboratory for architecture, design and urban experimentation, also brought to the Spanish city of Logroño the presence of 24 installations by international practices and creators, distributed across squares, vacant plots, streets, bridges and emblematic spaces throughout the city.
