Written by MA in Contemporary Art student, Tara Vivian Kubik.

Our MA in Contemporary Art study trip to the 61st Venice Biennale gave us the opportunity to experience one of the world’s most important exhibitions of contemporary art firsthand.

Looking back, my understanding of several works changed through conversations with classmates and faculty. By the end of the week, our class had developed very different favorites. Austria emerged as the clear winner for many of us, while India and Japan also generated particularly lively discussions.

I realize now that these pavilions were not only the most visually impressive, but also the ones we kept returning to in conversation—sometimes because we admired them, and sometimes because we simply could not agree.

“Being present revealed how audiences responded, and how institutions and artists shape the experience of performance in ways that no amount of reading could have prepared me for. That, for me, was the real value of the study trip.”

After a seven-year absence, India returned to the Biennale with a visually striking pavilion: Geographies of Distance: Remembering Home.

The presentation beautifully explored themes of memory, belonging, and diaspora. A highlight was Ranjani Shettar’s immersive installation Under the Same Sky.

Its gravity-defying, nature-rooted forms instantly captivated our group. Experiencing this pavilion brought our program content to life in ways that reading about postcolonial representation and diasporic identity never could. Theory became tangible, and abstract concepts took on physical form.

Japan’s pavilion surprised me in a completely different way. The life-sized baby dolls in Ei Arakawa Nash’s Grass Babies, Moon Babies immediately caught everyone’s attention. My first impression was that it almost felt too “Instagrammable.” Yet the more time we spent with the installation, the more my perspective changed.

Visitors were invited to carry the surprisingly heavy baby dolls through the pavilion and its garden, temporarily becoming their caregivers. In the intense Venetian heat, carrying the weight of the dolls was a real physical effort, adding an unexpected layer of realism to the experience.

Inspired by the artist’s own experience of becoming a father of twins in a queer relationship, Grass Babies, Moon Babies challenged traditional ideas of parenthood. Holding one of the dolls while seeing your own reflection in its mirrored sunglasses became unexpectedly moving.

What initially appeared playful gradually raised questions about social responsibility, encouraging our group to reflect on our own roles and personal relationships with children. Ultimately, this connection transformed a simple concept into an experience that prompted a question we returned to all week: What role does participation play in art?

For me, however, the Austrian Pavilion was the moment when looking became research. Since performance art is the focus of my master’s dissertation, Florentina Holzinger’s SEAWORLD VENICE was a personal highlight.

Before entering the pavilion, we watched Holzinger strike a massive bell with her naked body in a mesmerizing performance.

Afterwards, she came down to speak with the audience, and I briefly asked her about the physical demands of the performance and the emotions behind the work. Although our conversation lasted only minutes, it made experiencing the pavilion feel far more personal.

I had seen recordings of Holzinger’s performances before, but experiencing her work live was something completely different.

Waiting outside the pavilion, watching visitors leave before I entered, sensing the anticipation in the queue, and hearing the echo of her body striking the bell all became part of the work itself. It was an impressive example that performance cannot really be understood through photographs or video documentation alone. Presence changes everything.

Seeing Florentina Holzinger’s work during the same week as Marina Abramović’s retrospective “Transforming Energy” at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice added another dimension to the trip. Moving between these two artists made me think more about how endurance performance has evolved.

While the Biennale offers a powerful experience for any visitor, for me, our trip uniquely connected academic research with direct experience.

As my Master’s dissertation explores the institutionalization of endurance performance from Marina Abramović to Florentina Holzinger, being there was particularly meaningful. It didn’t answer my research questions. It made me ask better ones.

Being present revealed how audiences responded, and how institutions and artists shape the experience of performance in ways that no amount of reading could have prepared me for. That, for me, was the real value of the study trip.

Some pavilions and installations revealed themselves immediately, while others only became meaningful after discussing them with classmates and faculty.

The learning environment we created together in pavilion queues, over coffee, on vaporetto rides, and during evening debriefs felt as important as the artworks themselves.

Looking back, I realized that research does not always begin in a library or archive. Sometimes it begins by looking a little longer, questioning a first impression, and being open to someone else’s perspective.