BVLGARI launches its official partnership with the 2026 Venice International Art Biennale through two landmark art projects: presenting works by Lotus L. Kang at the BVLGARI Pavilion in Giardini, and hosting a dedicated exhibition by the BVLGARI Foundation at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, showcasing artists Laura Favaretto and Monia Ben Hamouda.
BVLGARI Makes a Striking Debut as Official Partner of the 2026 Venice Biennale
BVLGARI has officially become an Official Partner of the Venice International Art Biennale, extending its collaboration through 2030. This pivotal partnership reinforces the brand’s enduring commitment to art, creativity, and cultural dialogue—a testament to its mission to democratize access to beauty and innovation.
During the 2026 Biennale, BVLGARI will debut two flagship projects. The BVLGARI Pavilion at Giardini will host new works by Canadian artist Lotus L. Kang, while the BVLGARI Foundation will curate a special exhibition at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, featuring creations by Italian artists Laura Favaretto and Monia Ben Hamouda.
Giardini Pavilion and Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana
BVLGARI CEO Jean-Christophe Babin stated: “This collaboration marks a natural extension of our longstanding dedication to contemporary art—a forward-looking endeavor rooted in architectural and artistic excellence. As the exclusive partner, we aim to foster a dynamic, inspiring environment where audiences, artists, and curators converge to explore, engage, and shape the cultural landscape of tomorrow.”
BVLGARI CEO Jean-Christophe Babin
Lotus L. Kang at the BVLGARI Pavilion
In the BVLGARI Pavilion, Lotus L. Kang presents The Face of Desire is Loss, a site-specific installation exploring entropy, sedimentation, and nonlinear time. Suspended on steel beams, unstructured 35mm film strips form the core of the exhibition, continuously reacting to environmental light and humidity throughout the Biennale. Between these films, sculptural elements—crafted from tatami mats, cast objects, fluid materials, and mutable forms—interact with projections that transform spatial windows into planar, simultaneous visual fields.
Kang explains: “The Face of Desire is Loss condenses multiple temporalities into a single field dependent on light, time, and the viewer’s physical presence. A collage resisting fixation, the work positions the body as an evolving environment—a liminal space between decay and rebirth, where interior and exterior realms merge.”
Lotus L. Kang’s The Face of Desire is Loss
BVLGARI Foundation Exhibition at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana
The BVLGARI Foundation’s exhibition inhabits the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, a sanctuary of knowledge preservation. Two site-specific installations—Monia Ben Hamouda’s Fragments of Fire Worship in the entrance hall and Laura Favaretto’s final chapter of The Instant Between – The Library in the Salone Sansovino—dialogue with the library’s historical context.
Monia Ben Hamouda’s Fragments of Fire Worship
Laura Favaretto’s The Instant Between – The Library
This milestone reinforces the BVLGARI Foundation’s commitment to emerging talent. Both artists—Monia Ben Hamouda (recipient of the 2017 MAXXI-BVLGARI Prize) and Laura Favaretto (2004–2005 Premio Giovani Artista Italiano winner)—have strong ties to the Biennale, with Favaretto exhibiting in the 51st, 53rd, and 58th editions.
Beyond Venice, the BVLGARI Foundation presents Monia Ben Hamouda’s sculpture Ya’aburnee (Untranslated Fragment I and II) at the BVLGARI Hotel Milan gardens throughout the 2026 Biennale. Carved from Tunisian trachyte, this work interrogates the origins of artistic language and the possibility of rewriting art history, evoking inscriptions that resist definitive interpretation.
Monia Ben Hamouda’s Ya’aburnee (Untranslated Fragment I and II)
For years, BVLGARI's cultural investment has extended across diverse fields, embracing both classical heritage and contemporary innovation. Preserving and revitalizing historical artistic heritage has always been a source of inspiration for BVLGARI, driving the brand to fuse historical legacy with a spirit of modern innovation, creating a new aesthetic language and continually empowering future creativity.
The brand has put this philosophy into tangible action through numerous historic preservation projects: in Venice, participating in the restoration of the Doge's Palace's "Golden Staircase" (Scala d'Oro) and Paolo Veronese's paintings at the San Pietro Martire church on Murano Island; in Rome, carrying out multiple projects that underscore its deep connection with the Eternal City, including the restoration of the Spanish Steps, the polychrome mosaic floors of the Baths of Caracalla, and the marble sculptures of the Torlonia Collection.
At the same time, BVLGARI actively engages in dialogue with the contemporary creative sphere: since 2024, with the support of the BVLGARI Foundation, the brand has partnered with the MAXXI — National Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome to create the "MAXXI BVLGARI Art Prize," which will celebrate its tenth edition in 2027; BVLGARI has also collaborated with the Whitney Biennial; and this year, BVLGari is proud to become an official partner of the Venice
International Art Biennale.