Hans Ulrich Obrist arrives in Venice to lead the jury of the Biennale Architettura 2025 and as curator of Tolia Astakhishvili’s site-specific installation at the new headquarters of the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation
Hans Ulrich Obrist arrives in Venice in a dual role: President of the International Jury of the Biennale Architettura 2025 and curator of the first exhibition hosted in the new Venetian space of the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, which opens to the public with a site-specific project to love and devour by Georgian artist Tolia Astakhishvili, on view until November 23.
On Tuesday, May 6, from 6 PM to 8 PM, during the Biennale’s opening week, the inauguration will be accompanied by a sound performance by Ryoko Sekiguchi.
The new foundation for art in Venice
Founded in London, the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation is structured as a network of residences and projects spread across multiple locations, from Stromboli to Li Galli (SA), and now also in Venice. The foundation’s new space is located in a building that was transformed into a studio in the 1920s by the painter Ettore Tito. It is a layered and discontinuous structure, featuring architectural interventions from different eras and shifts in use: from an artist’s studio to a clinic for dockworkers.
The Foundation’s intervention reactivates the palace as a place of creation, starting with an installation that interacts with the building even before its final transformation into an exhibition venue. Tolia Astakhishvili lived in Venice during the winter months to work in dialogue with the space, adding and removing walls, altering proportions and geometries, and staging an unstable architecture composed of drawing, sound, painting, film, text, and memory.
Eight artists—Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Zurab Astakhishvili, Thea Djordjadze, Heike Gallmeier, Rafik Greiss, Dylan Peirce, James Richards and Maka Sanadze—accompany her installation with scattered interventions.
Hans Ulrich Obrist has defined the project as a “Gesamtkunstwerk” that blurs the boundaries between individual and collective work, between authorship and collaboration. It is an installation that opens itself to multiple interpretations, triggering feedback loops with its host space. The reference to Gilles Deleuze—”we are in the middle of things, but in the center of nothing“—describes the visiting experience as a fluid movement, without center or edges.
Hans Ulrich Obrist and the 2025 Biennale Lions
Hans Ulrich Obrist leads the international jury of the Biennale Architettura 2025 alongside Paola Antonelli and Mpho Matsipa. These three figures embody different approaches to curating and cultural projects. Their presence marks an open, transdisciplinary direction, attentive to collective forms of intelligence and production.
Obrist is known for his ability to create connections between different disciplines, avoiding sharp oppositions and favoring combinations that integrate heterogeneous languages. As he stated in an interview: “My least favorite word is either or… I prefer both and.” This vision is reflected in his curatorial activity, which aims to transform spaces and practices into relational systems open to multiple interpretations.
The awards ceremony will be held on Saturday, May 10, at Ca’ Giustinian, the headquarters of the Biennale. The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement has been awarded to the American philosopher Donna Haraway. The proposal came from curator Carlo Ratti, who highlighted her ability to link science, technology, and multi-species cohabitation in a perspective that transcends the boundaries between human and non-human.
The Special Golden Lion in Memoriam goes to Italo Rota (who passed away in 2024), an architect and designer whose career was marked by collaborations, formal invention, and attention to the relationship between nature and construction. The final phase of his work was intertwined with Ratti’s curatorial vision. The award will be accepted by Margherita Palli, set and costume designer, who is present at the Biennale with the project Material Bank: Matters Make Sense, created together with Stefano Capolongo and Ingrid Maria Paoletti from the Politecnico di Milano and Konstantin Novosëlov from the National University of Singapore (2010 Nobel Prize in Physics).
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Article by Lucia Pecoraro.
Photos courtesy of the Architecture and Visual Arts Press Office – La Biennale di Venezia.
Photos of the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation Venice by Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation. Portrait of Tolia Astakhishvili courtesy of Chanel.
