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Venice Biennale

17 stories

Visitors gaze up at the towering “Detritus” triptych, a wall-sized graphite field of drawn rubble, bones and relief objects, in the dock hall

From Malabon to Venezia: Ronald Ventura mounts collateral show at 61st Venice Art Biennale

Four in the morning in Malabon in the Nineties, sopas at Connie’s, and a father who recognises his own town inside a drawing of Venice.

By Igan D'Bayan · June 15, 2026
Ronald Ventura in his studio steadying a monumental winged male figure sculpture, a coiled woven form and shelves of casts behind

Malabon artist sets sail for Venice

Ronald Ventura transforms boat-body sculptures and lunar motifs into a meditation on water, survival, and the fragile ties between two cities.

By Igan D'Bayan · March 16, 2026
A visitor walks past the vast tilted timber structure of the Philippine Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, soil trays in the foreground

Heart & soil

A thousand hand-made tiles of soil from Calatagan, Baybay and Tampakan, built to erode: the Philippine Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale.

By Igan D'Bayan · August 18, 2025
Composite of the Philippine Pavilion community library: installed inside the Venice Arsenale on the left, rebuilt outdoors in Angat, Bulacan on the right, where visitors gather along its slatted walls

Philippine Pavilion’s ‘Structures of Mutual Support’: From the Biennale to Bulacan

From an old armory in Venice to a barangay in Angat, the award-winning community library goes home to the people who helped build it.

By Igan D'Bayan · July 6, 2024
Installation inside the Philippine Pavilion at the Venice Biennale featuring a large grey boulder with a brass horn sticking out and hanging white textile sheets

Mountain song: PHL Pavilion brings the aura of Banahaw to the Biennale

In the Philippine Pavilion, visitors walk among fabric, fake stones and sound, following the light. Mark Salvatus brings Banahaw to Venice.

By Igan D'Bayan · May 20, 2024
Senator Loren Legarda in a woven-trimmed black jacket stands among hanging fabric artworks and a boulder in the Philippine Pavilion

A raising of curtains: Senator Loren Legarda & the story of the PHL Pavilion in Venice

Over lunch in Venice, Senator Loren Legarda recounts how she willed the Philippines back to the Biennale after a 51-year absence.

By Igan D'Bayan · May 6, 2024
Visitors sit and stand among angular bamboo lattice frames forming a tunnel-like installation in a raw brick-walled hall of the Venice Arsenale

PHL Pavilion holds roundtable discussion: A journey through the arteries of cities & ideas

Manila was once called the Venice of the East. A roundtable on estuaries and esteros closes the Philippine Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale.

By Igan D'Bayan · December 23, 2023
Jurors of the Philippine Pavilion for the 60th Venice Biennale standing and sitting together in a conference room during deliberations

Beyond the veil: Carlos Quijon Jr. & Mark Salvatus to represent PH at the Venice Biennale

Curator Carlos Quijon Jr. and artist Mark Salvatus on taking the Philippines to Venice, and the curator’s shift from shaman to jack of all trades.

By Igan D'Bayan · August 14, 2023
Detail of a lifelike dead female centaur with a spotted horse body lying on pale stone tiles

People, events, dead centaurs, places

A family of dead centaurs in the Danish Pavilion, a German floor torn up to its Nazi-era joints: pavilion-hopping at the 59th Venice Biennale.

By Igan D'Bayan · April 10, 2023
Weaving installation with red threads and textiles hanging from the rafters of the Arsenale during the Philippine Pavilion exhibition at the Venice Biennale

An invisible thread that binds us all

The Pavilion’s closing act reaches the Pinoys of Venice: the waiters, the healthcare workers, the household helpers, all one existential tapestry.

By Igan D'Bayan · December 25, 2022
Portrait of NCCA Chairman Nick Lizaso posing in a garden in Venice, wearing a barong Tagalog

Nick Lizaso: 10,000 stories and one heart for the masses

After a life on stage and screen, the NCCA chairman calls himself simply an audience member now, watching people watch performances.

By Igan D'Bayan · June 27, 2022
A gondolier steers passengers along a Venetian canal past faded orange palazzi

Heavy liquid: Milk of Dreams at the Venice Biennale

Surrealism, an emptied Russian Pavilion and a fountain smuggled out of Kyiv in a white Audi: the 59th Biennale, where the going gets weirder.

By Igan D'Bayan · May 16, 2022
A large, colorful hand-woven tapestry hanging inside the Philippine Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

Backstage at the Biennale

Talking art with the curator and artists of the Philippine Pavilion over liters of Birra Moretti in the beautiful sinking city.

By Igan D'Bayan · May 9, 2022
Interior of the Philippine Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale featuring the wooden library structure and daily visitors

Philippines wins historic first award at Venice Architecture Biennale

Curators Khadka and Furunes take a Special Mention for “Structures of Mutual Support,” the Philippines’ first-ever Venice Biennale award.

By Igan D'Bayan · September 4, 2021
David Medalla in a grey flat cap, seen in profile in warm light, looking down at a book in a cluttered room

‘David Medalla has left us to enter the dream’

Trying to encapsulate David Medalla in one article is like reducing eternity to an hour. His partner and friends attempt it anyway.

By Igan D'Bayan · January 11, 2021
Visitor in patterned clothes standing on a glass bridge looking down into the infinite mirrors and structures of Mark Justiniani’s Venice Biennale installation

A flood of words, water & wonder at the closing ceremony of the Venice Art Biennale

As the Biennale closes, Mark Justiniani’s mirrored “Island Weather” seems to ripple out of the Philippine Pavilion into the flooding lagoon city.

By Igan D'Bayan · January 20, 2020
Top-down view of Mark Justiniani’s glass and steel installation Island Weather, featuring lighted infinite mirrors and geometric structural shapes resembling islands

Island of souls

Mark Justiniani and curator Tessa Maria Guazon on Island Weather, the glass-and-steel archipelago built for the 58th Venice Art Biennale.

By Igan D'Bayan · April 15, 2019