The Holy See pavilion, representing Vatican City, will include works by internationally renowned artists, poets and musicians—such as Brian Eno, FKA Twigs, Precious Okoyomon and Otobong Nkanga—at this year’s Venice Biennale (9 May-22 November). The exhibition will be based on the life and legacy of the Benedictine nun Saint Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), who was a medieval abbess, poet, healer and composer.
Twenty-four artists have been selected by the Vatican for the exhibition The Ear is the Eye of the Soul, which will take place across two sites: The Mystical Garden of the Discalced Carmelite in the Cannaregio district and the Santa Maria Ausiliatrice Complex in Castello. “The exhibition takes the form of a sonic prayer, a call to the contemplative act of listening,” a project statement says. Other participants include the musician Patti Smith, the US filmmaker Jim Jarmusch and the organist Kali Malone.
The pavilion is co-organised by Hans Ulrich Obrist, the artistic director at the Serpentine Gallery in London, and the US-based curator and publisher Ben Vickers, who founded the Arts Technologies department at the Serpentine. The Holy See project is also organised in collaboration with Soundwalk Collective, a sound art platform founded in 2001.
The Nigerian-US poet and artist Precious Okoyomon plans to show a series of wind chimes inspired by Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) which was written by the influential late French composer Olivier Messiaen and premiered in 1941. “It’s one of my favourite works by him,” they tell The Art Newspaper. “Hildegard’s language made me think of the language of angels.”
Hildegard of Bingen—considered a patron saint of musicians and writers—was officially declared a saint and doctor of the Catholic Church by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. “Hildegard’s music can be described as ‘ethereal’, ‘other worldly’, or intensely spiritual. She claimed that these chants were given to her in a series of visions, and they align with St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas’ views on ‘celestial music’—music in harmony with the rotation of the planets and the energies of the universe,” writes the singer Christian Jenkins.
“In the [Mystical] garden (Giardino Mistico), visitors are invited to reflect and listen through headphones to these new commissions [by 20 artists], realised in collaboration with the sound artists Soundwalk Collective, alongside a site-specific instrument created by Soundwalk Collective which listens to the garden in real time,” a project statement says.
Meanwhile the Santa Maria Ausiliatrice Complex will be “triangulated between three anchor points: the venue hosts a living archive, Alexander Kluge’s final work, and the twinned sonic liturgy of the nuns of Eibingen Abbey”. Kluge, a key figure in the New German Cinema movement, died last month; his final work, “a towering 12-station film and image installation unfolding across three rooms” will be unveiled as part of the project, the organisers say.
In recent years, the Vatican has been keen to highlight its cultural credentials. At the 2024 Venice Biennale, the Vatican’s decision to house its pavilion in a women’s prison on the Giudecca drew attention to “those living on society’s margins”, the curator Cristiana Perrella said. The Holy See participated for the first time in the Venice Biennale in 2013 with a pavilion inspired by the biblical narratives in the Book of Genesis.
The Dicastery for Culture and Education of the Holy See, the department of the Roman Curia responsible for relations with the contemporary art world, oversees the Holy See's national participation in the international art and architecture exhibitions of the Venice Biennale and also manages the Conciliazione 5 space, a contemporary art platform, in Rome.