‘I Thought I Would Never Have a Chance’: Ei Arakawa-Nash to Represent Japan at 2026 Venice Biennale
After giving up his Japanese nationality a few years ago, Arakawa-Nash thought he’d never be given the chance to represent his home country.
Los Angeles-based performance artist Ei Arakawa-Nash thought he’d lost the opportunity to represent his birth country at the Venice Biennale, having relinquished his Japanese nationality just a few years ago.
So it was with surprise that he received the news of his selection for next year’s edition by the Japan Foundation this week.
‘I thought I would never have a chance to represent Japan at the Venice Biennale,’ he said.
But now the Japanese American artist is set to bring his perspective as a queer parent to newborn twins, with an installation addressing ‘nationalism and patriarchy’ and referencing Natto Wada’s 1962 film Being Two Isn’t Easy, on the trials and tribulations of parenting in modern Tokyo.
He added that while representing the country is ‘getting more complicated’, with artists tasked to find a curator and cover costs, it is also an opportunity to innovate.
‘I want to bring something new and open in terms of the administration and history of exhibition-making at the Japan Pavilion,’ he said, citing previous pavilion artists Yuko Mohri (2024) and Dumb Type (2022) as examples.
Arakawa-Nash is known for collaborative interventions that have graced major institutions worldwide, including London‘s Tate Modern in 2021, the 2016 Berlin Biennale, the 2014 Whitney Biennale, and the Museum of Modern Art in 2012.
‘I always maintain a resistance to what people want from me as a performance artist. Performance art is not the service. It should not be like so called entertainment,’ he told Ocula in 2014.
Arakawa-Nash was selected from a shortlist of seven artists from within and outside Japan by the Japan Foundation, a government organisation dedicated to international cultural exchange, which has organised the Japan Pavilion since 1976.
The Venice Biennale is set to run from May to November next year. —[O]
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