Dries Verhoeven to Bring ‘Tangible Unease’ to Dutch Pavilion at 2026 Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale 9 May–22 November 2026

The Dutch pavilion will play host to a theatrical performance for the first time at next year’s Venice Biennale.

That’s following the selection of Dutch artist and theatre-maker Dries Verhoeven by the Mondriaan Fund advisory committee to represent the Netherlands.

Verhoeven was chosen alongside curator Rieke Vos for the ‘quality’ and ‘international impact’ of their proposal—a performance addressing global anxieties from geopolitical conflict in recent years.

Taking the Rietveld-designed pavilion as subject, Verhoeven’s work will respond to ‘a smouldering state of uncertainty, he currently perceives in the Netherlands and Europe’.

Verhoeven said it has been many years since the future has felt so uncertain.

‘Geopolitical tensions are grave, and that’s putting it mildly,’ he said. ‘I want to attempt to make this unease tangible, within the “safe space” of the Biennale.’

Pavilion commissioner and Mondriaan Fund director Eelco van der Lingen said the Dutch pavilion has historically sought to push boundaries, citing Renzo Martens’ collaboration with Congolese collective CATPC in 2024 and relocating Melanie Bonajo’s work to a church outside the Giardini in 2022 after lending the pavilion to Estonia.

‘Conventions are once again being pushed aside, and hierarchy and national representation are being challenged,’ van der Lingen said.

‘The building, the garden, the Biennale and the relationship with the outside world all deserve to be discussed, and I am therefore looking forward to Dries Verhoeven’s intervention, and to the questions that it will raise.’ —[O]

Main image: Dries Verhoeven and Rieke Vos. Photo: Robin de Puy.