Emilia Kabakov returns to Venice with a special project, conceived for the city and built together with its inhabitants, Diario veneziano. Around 500 people from the metropolitan city of Venice will be the protagonists, invited to write a page of this choral fresco and to entrust to the exhibition an object capable of symbolically representing their own bond with Venice. Fragments of lives, memories, desires, nostalgia, and hopes will compose a layered and surprising human mosaic, suspended between past and future. With the opening of the Open Call, which can be answered until 22 March 2026, the construction of this monumental and participatory work begins, inviting citizens to become co-authors of a unique collective story. People of all ages — from children to the elderly, from new citizens to long-established families — are called upon to contribute to this “total installation”, sharing their own experiences, which, interweaving with those of others, give form to a transversal and deeply human portrait of the city.
Emilia Kabakov, photo Credit BAM
The Open Call is open to all those who have a bond with Venice, regardless of age, background, or history. To participate, the loan of a symbolic object is required (maximum dimensions 40 × 30 × 30 cm, modest monetary value) that symbolizes one’s bond with Venice, accompanied by a short text (maximum 1,000 characters) recounting its story and making this bond explicit. Each contribution will become part of the work, giving life to a diary in which the city tells itself through those who inhabit it. To submit one’s object, the participation form can be filled in at the link docs.google.com/forms, or by writing to diarioveneziano@gmail.com (voice messages are also accepted), or by sending a text on paper, which will be collected at home together with the object.
Object part of the installation “Venetian Diary” by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, 2026
A further opportunity to participate in and learn more about the project is offered by the public meeting with Emilia Kabakov on Tuesday 10 March at 6.30 pm (CREA | Cantieri del Contemporaneo, Giudecca 211/A) — during which, as well as meeting the artist, it will be possible to hand over one’s object, share one’s story, and contribute immediately to the construction of the work. These moments of direct encounter, sought by Kabakov herself, make explicit the participatory nature of the project, founded on dialogue with the city and its inhabitants. The texts and objects received on loan will become part of the exhibition Diario veneziano, a collector of testimonies, transforming an individual invitation into a collective and democratic gesture.
Object part of the installation “Venetian Diary” by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, 2026, photo Credit Osvaldo Di Pietrantonio
Conceived by Ilya Kabakov and Emilia Kabakov and today developed by Emilia Kabakov three years after the death of her husband, Diario veneziano will be presented from 9 May to 28 June 2026 at the piano nobile of Ca’ Tron, home of the Università Iuav di Venezia, in conjunction with the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi and Giulia Abate, the exhibition -organized by BAM and under the patronage of the City of Venice – will transform the piano nobile of the historic sixteenth-century palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal into a great narrative device capable of restoring the voice of a community. Not an exhibition about Venice, but an exhibition with Venice: a “total installation” in which individual stories interweave in a choral portrait of the city. The project has its roots in 1993, when Ilya and Emilia Kabakov created an installation in Ghent based on shared writing. Today that intuition is renewed, expanding into a profoundly participatory dimension. As Emilia Kabakov states: «Venice is a beacon of hope for what can happen when neighbors support one another and share the responsibility of preserving their home for future generations».
Object part of the installation “Venetian Diary” by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, 2026
Ilya Kabakov (Dnepropetrovsk, USSR, 1933 – Long Island, USA, 2023) and Emilia Kabakov (Dnepropetrovsk, USSR, 1945) began their artistic partnership in the late 1980s, marrying in 1992. Together they redefined the concept of environmental installation through their celebrated “total installations” – immersive works that interweave personal memory, utopia and failure, dream and irony, reflecting on the universal human condition. Their works are present in the collections of the world’s leading international museums, including the Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, MoMA, MAXXI, the State Hermitage Museum, and the Royal Collection of Abu Dhabi. ArtNews magazine included them among the ten most influential living artists in the world. Following Ilya’s death in May 2023, Emilia Kabakov continues to realize and develop the projects conceived together, keeping alive one of the most significant artistic practices of the second half of the twentieth century.
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