Concurrent with the 61st Venice Art Biennale 2026, Emilia Kabakov brings Venetian Diary to Venice, a monumental and participatory work conceived together with her husband Ilya Kabakov (1933–2023), curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi and Giulia Abate. The exhibition, sponsored by the City of Venice, transforms the piano nobile of Ca’ Tron—a historic sixteenth-century palace on the Grand Canal, home to the Iuav University—into a large choral narrative device.

Approximately 500 residents of the metropolitan city will be invited to write a diary entry and donate a symbolic object: fragments of lives, memories, and hopes that compose a layered self-portrait of the city. Children, the elderly, new citizens, historic families, artists, and writers. One section is open to everyone through an open call. Faithful to the poetics of the Kabakovs’ total installations—immersive environments where the personal becomes universal—the project doesn’t portray Venice from the outside: it lets it speak firsthand.

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov are among the leading figures in international contemporary art, with works in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, MoMA, MAXXI, and the Hermitage. ArtNews has included them among the ten most influential living artists in the world. After Ilya’s passing in 2023, Emilia continues the projects they conceived together, keeping alive one of the most significant research projects of the second half of the twentieth century.