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Austrian performance artist Florentina Holzinger brought her boundary-defying Venice Biennale installation to a dramatic close with a final event titled CLOSING ÉTUDE. The culminating performance marked the end of seven months of SEAWORLD VENICE, her provocative and visceral exhibition at the Austrian Pavilion, which centered on bodily waste, lagoon debris and radical endurance.
A Monument Built From Bodily Waste
SEAWORLD VENICE opened in May with a striking image. A nude Holzinger acted as the human clapper of a massive bell salvaged from the Venice Lagoon. The bell continued ringing every hour throughout the exhibition, functioning as what Holzinger described as a grotesque altar to Venice’s ongoing environmental decline.
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The installation incorporated human waste collected fresh on-site and debris washed in by the high tide. Visitors could use portable toilets placed within the pavilion. Their urine was filtered and directed into a dunk tank as part of the work.
For CLOSING ÉTUDE, the bell traveled in a ceremonial procession from the Austrian Pavilion to the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, a historic venue in Venice’s Cannaregio district. The building dates to the Middle Ages, when it served as a guild hall. After an architectural restoration, it reopened as an exhibition space in 2015. Its soaring ceilings, vast interior and frescoes attributed to the school of Paolo Veronese provided a fitting backdrop for the final event.
Organizers described CLOSING ÉTUDE as “a final dinner,” drawing deliberate parallels to the Last Supper. According to the official announcement, the performance traced “a material transformation from solid to liquid, forging a relic.” All the bodily waste collected from pavilion visitors over the previous seven months formed the basis of a distilled monument. That monument was presented in front of the closed pavilion on November 22. The show concluded when the bell fell silent and water stopped circulating.
International Tour Planned for 2026 and Beyond
SEAWORLD VENICE will not end with the Biennale. An adapted version of the exhibition will travel internationally over the next several years.
Gropius Bau in Berlin will host the first stop in spring 2026. The show will then move to Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna that fall. Finally, in March 2028, Amant in Brooklyn will present the last leg of the tour.
Nora-Swantje Almes, curator for live programs and outreach at Gropius Bau, organized the Venice presentation. She will also oversee the upcoming international iteration of the work.
However, questions remain about how closely the touring version will resemble the original. A spokesperson for Amant confirmed to ARTnews in June that preparations were already underway. The spokesperson declined to confirm whether elements such as the jet skis and portable toilets from Venice would make the journey. “If you saw the show in Venice, you know it’s very site-responsive,” the spokesperson said. “So Almes needs to figure out how to adapt it for Berlin after the Biennale closes in Venice this fall. After that, we’ll have a better idea of how our own team can further adapt it for Brooklyn.”
The title CLOSING ÉTUDE itself carries meaning beyond the event. In classical music, an étude is a technically demanding piece designed to push a performer past their limits. By framing the finale this way, Holzinger suggested that even after seven months of extreme performance, greater challenges still lie ahead.
