The Unfinished Business of Living Together

The Swiss Pavilion at the 61st International Venice Biennale presents The Unfinished Business of Living Together, an exhibition conceived by curators Gianmaria Andreetta and Luca Beeler together with artist Nina Wakeford, and developed in collaboration with artists Miriam Laura Leonardi, Lithic Alliance, and Yul Tomatala.

The Unfinished Business of Living Together takes coexistence as both a social promise and a contested form. The project mobilises art to reopen the archive as a site of active dispute and engagement.

The project begins with voices featured in an April 1978 episode of the Swiss public television programme Telearena, in which the so-called “problem of homosexuality' was debated publicly and controversially on live television. This broadcast marked one of the first occasions when individuals identifying as homosexual gained a mainstream public voice beyond subcultural groups, catalysing and building coalitions between lesbian and gay communities across Switzerland. This theme was revisited six years later by the francophone talk show Agora (1984), bringing together Swiss, French, and Canadian audiences via satellite. Both programmes used live sketches written by the TV drama department to stimulate debate in the studio and encourage the audience to respond based on their own experience.

For the artistic team of the 2026 Swiss Pavilion, the challenges of living together remain unresolved and can be addressed in wildly different forms. Attempts at social change continue to compete against established norms and institutionalised systems of exclusion and silence. Within this framework, homosexuality serves as one historically specific entry point into examining how social norms determine who can speak and be heard. These debates reveal broader patterns, from state security requiring surveillance to moral panics around the nuclear family, showing how various forms of difference become perceived as threats to social order.

The exhibition stages both the possibilities and the frictions of “living together.” At its centre, a spatialised video production mixes archival footage with new images and sound. Extending into the Pavilion’s garden, the exhibition looks at the risks of intimacy in public space, how memory is anchored in place, and how the archive can be reactivated as a living resource for different narratives.

By revisiting and re-enacting the formal mechanisms of these TV talk shows, the exhibition operates through montage and installation and opens up broader questions about media infrastructures.

As the group note:
“We come from different language regions of Switzerland and beyond. Representing different generations and sharing international perspectives, we hope for a Pavilion that invites visitors to consider: When and where is this happening? Does the archive hold authority here? To whom does the past belong? Will viewers take a strong position?”

The exhibition is the result of collaborative artistic and curatorial work. Each member of the group contributes their own expertise and layers of complexity. The Unfinished Business of Living Together ultimately experiments with how voices, spaces, and perspectives can be shared and need to be continuously reconfigured.

Media requests
Switzerland, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia: Anja Grünenfelder, agruenenfelder@prohelvetia.ch
International, Pickles PR, Costanza Savelloni, costanza@picklespr.com
Caroline Widmer, caroline@picklespr.com