Venice Biennale 2024

The artist Anna Jermolaewa designed the exhibition in the Austrian pavilion for the 2024 Venice Biennale. Among other things, the exhibition included two videos, which were displayed on high-resolution LED walls.

About the artist:
“Anna Jermolaewa was born in Leningrad (USSR) in 1970. She had to flee the Soviet Union for political reasons in 1989 and found her new home in Austria.

There she has been developing an oeuvre for 35 years that is dedicated to the everyday in both conceptual and poetic ways.

Her works invite us to take a closer look at the social and political interactions within our society.

The works in the exhibition range from the artist’s experience of flight in Research for Sleeping Positions (2006) and Untitled (Telephone Booths) (2024) to signs of revolution and subversion against undemocratic regimes in The Penultimate (2017) and Ribs (2022/24).

These themes culminate in Rehearsal for Swan Lake (2024). The video, installation and performance work, created in collaboration with the Ukrainian ballet dancer and choreographer Oksana Serheieva, transforms Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet from a Soviet instrument of distraction and censorship into a form of political protest – the dancers rehearse for regime change in Russia.”