Venice 30122
Italy
labiennale@ngprague.cz
National gallery Prague and Slovak National Gallery together announce their representation at the 61st Venice Biennale from May 9 to November 22, 2026.
Year 2026 will mark the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Czechoslovak Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. To celebrate, the common Czech and Slovak presentation, will bring together artists Jakub Jansa, Selmeci Kocka Jusko working with curator Peter Sit and commissioner Michal Novotný to realise the project The Silence of the Mole.
At the center of The Silence of the Mole is Mr. M., an exhausted actor who has played the character of the mole for decades. Once an embodiment of childhood innocence and poetic silence, the Mole has turned into a mascot of cultural diplomacy, a licensed commodity, and a nostalgic myth, a symbol of stolen fantasy. Sent to represent the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic as a diplomatically acceptable, politically neutral figure, the mole also embodies reproach, silence, and a confused identity. In the burrow, the faint, unlocatable noise that destabilizes its refuge mirrors how our silenced instruments, once meant to resonate, become sites of anxiety, where the absence of sound carries a more oppressive weight than its presence.
The project explores Czech-Slovak coexistence, collective memory, and ecological fatigue, asking what happens to imagination when it becomes a public mask.The Silence of the Mole is engaging deeply with the pavilion’s architecture and the idea of a shared Czech and Slovak presentation. At once straightforward and multilayered, it draws on cultural references from both countries to explore the ways in which identity of the two nations has been staged over time. Its interdisciplinary format bringing together film, objects and architecture as a whole installation.
Inaugurated on the occasion of the Czechoslovak participation at the Venice Biennale in 1926, the Czech and Slovak Pavilion in Giardini di Castello in Venice is a late work of Czech modernist architect Otakar Novotný (1880–1959). Designed in the modernist style—the building is a composition of simple geometric volumes, a rectangular base and a triangular glass skylight, it also echoes the classical architectural language with recessed pillars and clad portal. Its location in the proximity to the national pavilions of France, Germany and Great Britain at the the time of its opening indicated a strong geopolitical inclination of Czechoslovakia as a newly founded state.
Jakub Jansa (b. 1989) is an artist with a distinctive approach to combining film, installation, and performance. Through a nuanced and reflective sensibility, his work raises questions about the mechanisms of social structures and the ideologies shaping them. His exhibition series with the umbrella title Club of Opportunities reflects dynamics of class issues and power hierarchies in a way that is poetic yet intellectually provocative. Work blends fiction, humor, and elements of the grotesque with contemporary leftist theories. He creates imaginative environments that expose the fragile and illusory nature of social systems we live in. In 2021 was awarded the Jindřich Chalupecký Award. His work Shame to Pride is part of the new permanent exhibition at the National Gallery Prague. In 2022 he created a new comprehensive work for the exhibition Flower Union, which was organized by the National Gallery Prague on the occasion of the Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The latest, ninth episode of Club of Opportunities was commissioned for the 57th Steirischer Herbst (2024) at the Neue Galerie Graz. In 2023 had an extensive solo exhibition at the Stone Bell House of the Prague City Gallery. He has also presented his work at Pioneer Works (2018) and Anthology Film Archives (2023) in New York, the 34th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts (2021), HEK in Basel (2020), and the 6th Athens Biennale (2018).
Selmeci Kocka Jusko are an artistic duo of Alex Selmeci (b. 1994) and Tomáš Kocka Jusko (b.1994), who create complex intermedia installations or, in contrast, present collections of physical objects that function as “energy tabs.” Disrupting traditional exhibition formats, they explore the fluidity of interpretation through layered visual and spatial structures, examining the relationship between visual representation, memory, and perception. Their practice often employs “soft technologies” of repair and provisional structures, emphasizing permeability rather than closure. Experimenting with systems of measurement, they use intuitive methods to question how time, scale, and quantity can be embodied within material form. Their work also engages with the relationship between labor, exhaustion, and imagination, treating artistic practice not only as a form of production but also as resistance and a modest utopian gesture of empathy and attention. Through strategies of slowness, delay, and retreat, Selmeci and Kocka Jusko articulate forms of resilience against acceleration and precariousness, imagining post-work scenarios and the possibility of ecological regeneration. Their recent projects include a permanent public space installation Spool in Bratislava (with Natália Sýkorová, 2024), solo exhibitions at MeetFactory (2024) and Galerie NoD (2023) in Prague, at VUNU in Košice (2022, 2019) and their first institutional exhibition at East Slovak Gallery in Košice (2020). They have also presented their work at PLATO in Ostrava, Kunstverein Gastgarten in Hamburg, Longtermhandstand Hall in Budapest, The 34th Biennale of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, FUTURA in Prague and Print Gallery in Tokyo.
Peter Sit (b. 1991) is an artist and curator. He currently works as art director at e-flux journal. From 2012 to 2022 he was co-founder and member of the collective and platform APART, with which he realized a wide range of exhibitions, publications, and discursive projects. Together with APART he exhibited at institutions such as Kunsthalle Bratislava, Karlín Studios in Prague, Easttopics in Budapest, Biennial of Graphic Design in Brno, CCA Chronicle in Bytom, MoMA in New York, and Glassbox in Paris, Alserkal Arts Foundation in Dubai, the City Gallery Prague, Kunsthalle TRAFO in Szczecin. Sit has participated in international residencies including the Salzburg Summer Academy and Art in General, New York. His editorial and curatorial practice spans books, exhibitions, and public programs, including Harun Farocki: Shaping of Our Present (A Promise of Kneropy, 2022), Life, Death, Love and Justice with Didem Yazici (Yapı Kredi Culture Centre, Istanbul, 2022), and the 9th Futurological Congress: Future of Language with Julieta Aranda (Slovak Radio Building, Bratislava, 2019). He has organized and contributed to numerous lectures and discussions on conceptual art in relation to art education and mental health. He is currently working on a research and writing project Art in Times of Anxieties and Depressions.
Michal Novotný is the director of the Collection of Art after 1945 at the National Gallery in Prague since 2019, and Commissioner of the Czech Pavilion at the Venice Biennale since 2024. He also teaches at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. His research focuses on the identity of Central and Eastern European art. His recent projects include the new collection exhibition 1939–2021: End of the Black-and-White Era with Eva Skopalová and Adéla Janíčková, National Gallery Prague, 2023; and collaboration with Centre Pompidou on festival MOVE: Intimacy as Resistance, at the National Gallery, Prague, and Centre Pompidou, Paris and the project Flower Union at the European Council in Brussels, both in 2022.
