Moments from Russian Pavilion, Giardini

Built in 1914, the Russian pavilion is one of the oldest purpose-built national pavilions in the Giardini, a Russian Revival building designed by Alexey Shchusev, the architect who would later design Lenin's Mausoleum in Moscow. For most of its history it functioned like any other national pavilion, showcasing Russian and Soviet art across a century of dramatic political change. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, that has stopped: Russia has not presented an official exhibition, and in several recent Biennale editions, reportedly including 2026, the pavilion has remained physically closed to the public entirely, its doors shut for the duration of the exhibition amid sustained pressure from the EU and the wider international art world over Russia's continued participation in the Biennale at all.

Rather than a description of what to see inside, this pavilion is currently worth understanding as a piece of the Biennale's own political present: a landmark building standing dark and inaccessible in the middle of a park otherwise full of open doors, a visible, physical marker of exactly how art institutions have and haven't responded to the war. Check current-year Biennale information before assuming any access, the situation has continued to shift edition to edition.