Personal highlights from the Venice Biennale 2026.

My first trip to the Venice Biennale this May was a blast! I did not know what to expect, but I got so much more than I could imagine of intriguing works of art, historical architecture, food and all the things inbetween. Even though I got home three days ago, I still haven't quite landed yet and I guess I won't for some time. And theres still many pavillions and artwork I didn't have time to check out so maybe, just maybe I will return for a second blissful experience. This post will highlight some of the works I enjoyed the most, and I guess will stay with me forever. If you'd like to read more, please check out this webpage: https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2026

The first day it was a little rainy, so I went for the long showroom at the Arsenale first wich was indoors.

The Moroccan pavillion presented woven works from Amina Agueznay.

Beautiful knitted work at the Uzbekistan pavillion by A.A.Murakami.

Outside of the Arsenale I totally fell for this piece by Philip Aguirre (Belgium).

The last two days had better weather, so I went to the Giardini and off course visited the Nordic pavillion with this piece by Norway's Tori Wrånes.

As an old graffiti artist the german pavillion with a facade made by mosaic tiles by Sung Tieu intrigued me.

The huge interactive work by Ei Arakawa-Nash (Grass babies, Moon babies) at the Japanese pavillion was both fun and thought provoking.

Shoutout to Alma Allen at the US pavillion. I really endulged in these sculptures.

The spanish pavillion was bombarded with postcards gathered through flea markets over twenty years! Oriol Vilanova really made me think about what kind of images we use to communicate.

Right outside the Giardini you can find the Marinaressa Gardens. It's two smaller gardens filled with stupidly good sculptures here showing Avetis Sargsyan's "Loss of self".

Olga Lomaka's "Dreaming Miki".

And now my personal favourite :-). I have never before been weak in the knees and just standing still with my mouth open when looking at artworks, but this...  This work called "Permanent address" by Sumakshi Singh at the Indian pavillion was just jaw-droppingly beautiful.

Thousands of small embroidered threads make up this architectural piece wich resembles a memory of a home. I'm lost for words.

If you have the means, please don't sleep on this years Biennale. You won't regret it!

Colored pencils update + Swatches!

So I've had this huge sheet of paper layin across my desk so that I can draw any time I'd like.

And the last few weeks I actually made some progress. Stopping by from time to time to continue coloring and maybe draw some new lines. I still have no idea where this will go, but interestingly enough the drawings starts to take the shape of a heart... Oh yeah, and that troublesome line, turned out to be some kind of leg.

I've also added som new colors to my collection, mostly leftovers from different acquaintances. During this experimentational process I decided to make swatches (small color-samples) from every one of them. This helped me a lot with choosing colors cause not every colored pencils is marked with the exact color it produces on the paper.

First I made swatches at random and maybe matching colors tonally. But I made the swatches one more time categorizing the after wich brand the where. This made it a lot easier for me to find the right pencil in the myriad of pencils.

I started on the upper left side. Since I'm right handed this will prevent me from dragging to much color around with my arm. I found it nice to match the colors used on the different shapes with eachother. So that the shapes can work together visually. But I left some areas blank. For these I can choose any color I like, so I leave them until more of the great shapes are done. This way I can pick a olor that's right for the whole composition in these areas instead of making a choice I might regret right away.

Suddenly I was presented with a problem. The area highlighted in the first picture below was surrounded with colors on every side, and I needed to make this area work in harmony with the rest of the designs. So I started with the most isolated area from the other colors and the tried to imagine how I could "fuse" everything together. 

The solution was to make some new shapes with the colored pencils alone and mix some kind of 3D- and 2D-designs.

This is how it looks like right now. Until next time :-)