Inside Bvlgari's considered and long-term partnership with the Venice Biennale

The 61st edition of the Venice Biennale opened just over a week ago (see our picks for what to see) and has already caused a stir with collectors and critics alike. Amid the distinct complexities of the 2026 edition, it’s also the first time in the institution’s storied history that it has appointed an exclusive partner. Bvlgari, the Roman jewellery maison, is no stranger to cultural patronage, having restored ancient monuments such as the Eternal City’s Spanish Steps and partnered with contemporary art institutions like the MAXXI in Rome and New York’s Whitney Museum. Following the launch of the Fondazione Bvlgari in 2024, the maison’s latest role as exclusive partner will continue through to 2030, marking a long-term commitment to the city's artistic legacy.

‘The maison did a lot of these activities before the inauguration of the foundation,’ managing director, Matteo Morbidi, told Wallpaper*. ‘It's not something new, it's just been formalised to manage the work we started many years ago.’ Debuting with two exhibition initiatives, the foundation establishes a presence that bridges the Biennale proper and the city’s historic heart of San Marco. Significantly, the foundation has chosen to work with artists who were already linked to the maison through previous residencies and awards. ‘It’s very important that if we begin a collaboration with an artist, that we are able to support them long term,’ Morbidi added.

The first of the foundation’s two exhibitions takes place at the new, purpose-built Bvlgari pavilion within the Giardini, where Canadian artist Lotus L. Kang has created a deeply poetic, site-specific installation titled The Face of Desire Is Loss. Working through themes of transition, cycles of generation, exhaustion and repair, the New York-based artist channels her own Korean heritage to expand the specific into something universal. The show's title borrows from a line in Lara Mimosa Montes’s poetry book Thresholes, an exploration of how structural gaps and voids can become generative sites of strength. It’s an idea that physically manifests the moment you approach the pavilion and notice a large, cast bronze lotus root outside. The root's porous architecture – where its voids lend it the structural capacity to bear a thousand times its own weight – echoes through the exhibition's skeleton. Suspended above the show are industrial ‘superjoists’ that match the root's form, functioning as an incredibly light yet strong framework from which Kang hangs large sheets of unfixed photographic film that chemically change their colours over time, continuously absorbing the light and atmosphere around them.

Suspended alongside these films (or what Lang refers to as ‘skins’) are overhead sculptures of cast aluminum tatami mats and fiberglass-and-plaster kelp knots. The mats act as devices that record sedimentary traces of life, like mattresses collecting the invisible history of the bodies that sleep, love, and convalesce upon them. A Super 8 film loop shot in South Korea plays on a wrapped monitor, capturing Korean mudflats where coastal and land ecosystems overlap. Kang operates entirely within these fluid, permeable boundaries: turning living seaweed inert through casting, while making a still photograph reactive and alive. A choreographed lighting score, synchronised to a rhythm inspired by contemporary Korean poet Kim Hyesoon, cycles the pavilion through the distinct light of dawn, noon, and dusk. Nearby, 49 bottles of spirits sit quietly around the space – a poignant nod to the 49 days a soul hovers in a liminal state before reincarnation in Buddhist tradition, anchoring the entire show in cycles of death and rebirth.

A twenty-minute walk from the Giardini, Bvlgari stages its official collateral event in the majestic Salone Sansovino of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana on San Marco Square. ‘We first selected the location, then presented this to the artists and asked if they would like to respond to it,’ explained Morbidi. ‘We never want to impose something on the artists, but instead give them total freedom of creation.’ Here, Monia Ben Hamouda and Lara Favaretto confront concepts of language and knowledge in radically different ways.

In the library’s vestibule, Monia Ben Hamouda – the latest recipient of the MAXXI Bulgari Prize and a former fellow at the American Academy in Rome – presents Fragments of Fire Worship. Her monolithic, neon wall sculptures introduce a searing, restless energy to the historic venue. As the daughter of a calligrapher, Ben Hamouda treats language as a physical gesture, creating an expressive though nonexistent alphabet out of script-like marks. The use of orange neon also subtly references Marciana's multiple close calls with obliterating fires, positioning language as a similarly ambivalent force that both reveals and destroys.

Stepping into the main salon, Lara Favaretto’s Momentary Monument – The Library approaches language as a completed form: the book. Acting as a library within a library, the installation consists of a bespoke shelving unit which stretches the length of the hall and is stacked with donated books. Prior to the exhibition, a custom software randomly paired titles with unique images from Favaretto’s personal archive and printed them inside each tome. By scattering these images randomly inside books that themselves contain marginalia, annotations and other traces of use, Favaretto subverts the idea of permanent preservation, proving that even recorded knowledge is fragile and constantly shifting. This is mirrored formally, where visitors are encouraged to take a book home, transforming the installation over time as shelves gradually empty. ‘It’s really a work about the conservation of memory,’ Morbidi notes of the dialogue between the artists and the setting. ‘That’s something really important for the future generation. It's a reflection on time, on heritage.’

For the foundation, their role as exclusive partner demands a familiar approach of exchange rather than imposition. ‘We had a very delicate approach with Venice. It's a very fragile environment and we wanted to be in conversation with that,’ Morbidi added. By championing creative freedom and honouring the unique fabric of the city, the Maison is establishing a thoughtful new blueprint for luxury patronage – one that acts as a guardian of cultural heritage while nurturing the next generation of contemporary artists.