Cover ‘Seaworld Venice’ by Florentina Holzinger at the Austrian pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2026 (Photo: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak)
‘Seaworld Venice’ by Florentina Holzinger at the Austrian pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2026 (Photo: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak)
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Austrian performance artist Florentina Holzinger transforms Venice into an amphibious, feminist theme park that confronts extreme bodily limits, overtourism and environmental collapse
If the Venice Biennale were to be compared to Tokyo DisneySea—where visitors queue anywhere from five minutes to several hours across different themed zones—the Austrian Pavilion this year, where performance artist and choreographer Florentina Holzinger stages her provocative installation Seaworld Venice, would easily be the hugely popular Anna and Elsa’s Frozen Journey ride. Here in Venice, home to the world’s most historic and expansive biannual arts festival, the queue for the Austrian Pavilion meanders through the Giardini gardens. During the opening week in May, waiting times stretched past three hours just to step inside.
All are eager to catch a glimpse of Holzinger’s installation, which gives a fun, dark—and stark naked—twist to what the pavilion’s architect Josef Hoffmann originally envisioned as a modernist “temple of art”. The choreographer, represented by Thaddaeus Ropac, has reimagined the pavilion as an underwater theme park. Yet instead of Olaf-inspired shaved ice and musical water rides, visitors encounter a giant tank in which a performer, wearing nothing except a breathing mask, is submerged in water filtered directly from tourist urine collected from special toilets inside the pavilion.
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Above Two performers in the “pisstank” in the courtyard of ‘Seaworld Venice’ by Florentina Holzinger (Photo: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak)
Two performers in the “pisstank” in the courtyard of ‘Seaworld Venice’ by Florentina Holzinger (Photo: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak)
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The performer lies on a bed, evoking Giorgione’s 1510 painting Sleeping Venus. Occasionally, she gazes out placidly at visitors who stand curious and mesmerised by the sight; at other times, she takes a sip of water from a long straw connected to a drinkable water source outside the tank. Sometimes she folds up the bed and lounges around the tank as if it were her living room, her pruned fingers and toes clearly visible after hours under water.
In an adjoining room that resembles a malfunctioning water treatment facility, actors clad in protective gear struggle to repair leaking pumps while wrestling with plastic pipes spraying brownish water. “Someone took a sh*t in the toilet and clogged it,” says a staff member, who turns out to be part of the cast.
In the corridor connecting the pavilion’s atrium to the rest of the Giardini, a naked jet ski driver makes rounds in a small pool representing a flooded pavilion. The circling motion stirs up swirls and waves, sending water spilling over into the spectator area.
Above The hands of a performer after being underwater for hours in the “pisstank” at ‘Seaworld Venice’ by Florentina Holzinger (Photo: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak)
The hands of a performer after being underwater for hours in the “pisstank” at ‘Seaworld Venice’ by Florentina Holzinger (Photo: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak)
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Holzinger’s creations possess all the elements that provoke widespread chatter: nudity, art derived from urine and allusions to faecal matter. Far beyond initial shock value, however, the work delivers an uncompromising critique of Venice’s ongoing struggle with “turbo-tourism” and ecological destruction.
“Venice is a place where we can see the impacts that human activities have on the environment: rising water levels, more frequent floods and acque alte [seasonal tide peaks that periodically flood low-lying areas of the northern Adriatic Sea]—the sinking city is not just a myth here,” says Holzinger. “Many artists, including myself, have been inspired by the beauty of Venice and its apocalyptic mood, which ironically didn’t keep people from contributing to its ruin.”
Through her installations and performances, she imagines life in a city that has finally submerged, laying bare humanity’s complex relationship with nature. The jet ski creates an absurd image of confined nature and mankind’s urge to dominate it through machinery. Meanwhile, the performer in the tank must adapt to life in what Holzinger bluntly terms a “pisstank”.
Above The “water filtration plant” at ‘Seaworld Venice’ by Florentina Holzinger (Photo: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak)
The “water filtration plant” at ‘Seaworld Venice’ by Florentina Holzinger (Photo: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak)
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“It’s a closed-circuit system where bodily fluids become an abject architectural reality of the pavilion,” she explains. “Visitors often express guilt over peeing on the performer, but by living in the piss, she also has the privilege of experiencing the world as it is: without illusion. Not only the performer, but everybody gets to reflect on the reality of climate change and water pollution that we all play a part in accelerating.” She adds: “Of course we don’t fix the problem of climate collapse. The point of the exhibition is to make everyone visibly complicit in a collapsing, wet ecosystem.”
The collapsing ecosystem is not the only issue Holzinger tackles at the pavilion. The Austrian performance artist is renowned for staging works involving bodily art so extreme that audience members have fainted or vomited in past productions. Her 2024 performance Tanz at West Kowloon, Hong Kong, for instance, featured human skin being pierced with hooks to suspend a performer in mid-air, prompting organisers to set up a dedicated recovery area outside the Freespace theatre for overwhelmed spectators.
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Above A performer driving a jet ski at ‘Seaworld Venice’ by Florentina Holzinger (Photo: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak)
A performer driving a jet ski at ‘Seaworld Venice’ by Florentina Holzinger (Photo: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak)
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While blood is absent in Venice, spectators have nevertheless expressed concern over the physical intensity demanded of the all-female cast. Beyond the long hours performers spend submerged in filtered water, another striking installation features a naked performer suspended upside down from a bell, swinging from side to side to strike it.
Holzinger staged a similar public performance titled Études in the Venetian lagoon before the official pavilion opening in early May, hanging upside down from a bell suspended by an industrial crane. The spectacle was accompanied by rock music played by performers balancing on the crane arm and an adjacent barge.
“Études is a way for us to exit the realm of theatre and enter the real world,” Holzinger says. “What was missing in theatre and the biennale setup was nature, as well as the smelly, dirty city and its people. It was very important for me to leave the Giardini to really work with and in the city, specifically in its murky water and lagoon.”
Above ‘Études’ at ‘Seaworld Venice’ by Florentina Holzinger (Photo: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak)
‘Études’ at ‘Seaworld Venice’ by Florentina Holzinger (Photo: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak)
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Rather than framing such acts around female suffering, Holzinger uses the body as an active device to challenge social norms and prove physical capability. “We go against traditional representations of women as victims or muses by proving capability rather than staging suffering, and redefine female vulnerability from our own perspective,” she notes. “We exhibit strength in unexpected ways. Many things we end up doing I consider practice or exercise, so being in a constant effort of adapting and using a situation to grow from it.” Living in the “pisstank”, she maintains, is not mere spectacle, but “training for a way of life in a world full of waste”.
Public response to the pavilion has been mixed. Some critics praise her work as groundbreaking in expanding performance art boundaries, while others dismiss it as an empty spectacle clamouring for attention. Addressing the fine line between pain and pleasure, and spectacle and art—a frequent theme in her extreme physical practice—Holzinger rejects simplistic categorisation.
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Above A musician performing at ’Études’ at ‘Seaworld Venice’ by Florentina Holzinger (Photo: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak)
A musician performing at ’Études’ at ‘Seaworld Venice’ by Florentina Holzinger (Photo: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak)
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“I don’t really see the difference, to be honest,” she observes. “Experiencing the work in the many different humanly possible ways is already good.”
She argues that when a performance departs from institutional narratives or fails to fit neat social media descriptions, audiences are easily unsettled. By orchestrating a forceful collision between flesh and machinery, Holzinger ruptures polished aesthetic surfaces to confront the raw, visceral realities of social and ecological breakdown. “There are so many layers to this Seaworld Venice to explore; it’s impossible to dismiss it as mere spectacle if you really commit to it,” she asserts.
Above ‘Études’ at ‘Seaworld Venice’ by Florentina Holzinger (Photo: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak)
‘Études’ at ‘Seaworld Venice’ by Florentina Holzinger (Photo: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak)
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She seeks to dismantle the traditional boundaries separating high-brow and low-brow culture by introducing elements of stunt work, circus and pop culture into prestigious institutional art spaces.
“There is still this fine line between high and low-brow culture. In the world of performing arts, it would be ballet, opera and even avant-garde theatre standing in opposition to pop culture, sports or porn,” she explains. “We try to ‘shock’ institutions out of their habits, to mix it up and bring people to an ambiguous place where they get to reflect on their own expectations, behaviour and morals. When we are not clear what exactly it is that we are watching, it becomes interesting for me, especially in places of so-called high-brow art like the Venice Biennale. We have the privilege to infiltrate there, and I take it as an obligation to challenge the habits of such places.
“Obligation sounds too forced maybe—it simply is what’s fun for me and my team.”
Zabrina is the Senior Editor, Arts and Culture of Tatler Hong Kong. She specialises in performing arts, visual art and film. Her wanderlust was first fuelled by the Mighty Rovers Antarctica Expedition 2010. Over the years, she has interviewed A-list artists and filmmakers, including Oscar winners Chlóe Zhao and Tim Yip, Golden Horse winner Sylvia Chang, In the Mood for Love cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Pachinko author Min Jin Lee, and Coachella’s first Chinese solo singer Jackson Wang. She won gold at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Awards for her 2021 feature on the waves of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
