Diario veneziano. The project by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov that places Venetians at its center unfolds between the Biennale and the city

A new chapter is added to Diario veneziano, the participatory project by Ilya Kabakov and Emilia Kabakov, curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi and Giulia Abate, which will be presented in Venice on the occasion of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia: the city’s intimate mapping will extend from the piano nobile of Ca’ Tron (9 May – 28 June 2026) to the Biennale Gardens, within the Padiglione Venezia, entering into dialogue with Note persistenti, the exhibition project curated by Giovanna Zabotti with Denis Isaia and Cesare Biasini Selvaggi.

In keeping with the curatorial theme In Minor Keys, the Pavilion takes shape as a sensitive score that invites visitors to attune themselves to the deepest frequencies of Venice: those that emerge from its submerged layers, from the material that sustains it, from intimate narratives, and from the collective dimension that runs through it.

Across the sequence of spaces that guide visitors through four symbolic dimensions of the city—submerged, domestic, mythological, and collective—the exhibition unfolds through an equal number of interdisciplinary artistic interventions in dialogue with one another. Alberto Scodro’s sculptures, which investigate the invisible processes of matter and evoke the dimension of the underwater world, resonate with Dardust’s immersive sound composition, developed with Paolo Fantin, H-Farm, and Cisco, as well as with the works included in the project Artefici del Nostro Tempo, dedicated to the emerging expressions of younger generations of artists. Within this polyphonic score, the domestic and relational dimension finds one of its most significant expressions in Venetian Diary by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, which constitutes the heart of the collective project conceived by the duo with the participation of Venetians, along a path that connects the Venice Pavilion and Ca’ Tron.

Three years after Ilya Kabakov’s passing, Venice welcomes one of the most emblematic projects by the couple, in art as in life: a monumental and participatory work that takes the form of a choral self-portrait of the city. Curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi and Giulia Abate, Venetian Diary takes shape at Ca’ Tron—the Iuav University seat overlooking the Grand Canal—where the piano nobile is transformed into a large narrative device, and continues at the Venice Pavilion, reassembling the unity of the project in dialogue with the exhibition path of Note persistenti.

Not an exhibition about Venice, but an exhibition with Venice: this is the premise guiding the entire project. Around 500 inhabitants of the metropolitan city, belonging to different generations, social backgrounds, and urban areas, have contributed by writing a diary page recounting their relationship with the city and by lending a personal object capable of representing it. Fragments of lives, memories, and desires thus come together in a constellation of stories that restores the social and emotional complexity of the lagoon.

As Emilia Kabakov states: “From the stories collected, it emerges just how full Venice is of people who work hard to sustain not only the city, but also a sense of community rarely found in the digital age. At a time when political, economic, and religious differences seem insurmountable, Venice is a beacon of hope: an example of what happens when neighbors support one another, sharing the responsibility of caring for their home for future generations.”

Portrait Emilia and Ilya Kabakov by Werner Hannapel

Displayed in a series of thematic showcases and accompanied by the stories entrusted by the participants, the collected objects—tools, keepsakes, minimal traces of everyday life and of the future—become true “resonance chambers” of lived experience, transforming the work into a device of collective listening. In keeping with the Kabakovs’ poetics and their idea of the “total installation,” the experience is not limited to viewing, but takes shape as an immersive space in which the individual dimension intertwines with the universal one.

As Cesare Biasini Selvaggi explains: “The objects we asked Venetians to lend us are not simple ready-mades, but ‘resonance chambers’ of lives. They are teddy bears, tools, fragments of small-scale biographies that, brought together, compose a map of feeling, where art ceases to be an object to look at and becomes a collective affective diary, reminding us that being protagonists means, first and foremost, being together.”