Silverlens makes a return to the 61st Venice Biennale, with Pio Abad, Marigold Santos, Michael Joo, and Martha Atienza spearheading the gallery’s presence across both the main pavilion and satellite programming. Running from 9 May through 22 November 2026, this year’s Biennale, titled In Minor Keys, follows artistic director Koyo Kouoh’s vision of artists as “vital interpreters of the social and psychic condition.”
Beyond the central exhibition, Atienza’s practice finds further resonance in the parallel program The Spirits of Maritime Crossing 2026, held at Palazzo Rocca Contarini Corfù (9 May–2 August). Curated by Apinan Poshyananda for the Bangkok Art Biennale, this exhibition situates Atienza’s moving-image practice—deeply rooted in the labor and climate vulnerability of Philippine coastal communities—within a transnational dialogue on maritime crossings as both lived and mythic experiences.
Pio Abad’s combines personal and national memory.
At the Giardini’s Central Pavilion, Pio Abad continues his incisive investigation into the mechanics of power and political mythology. By reframing objects that echo both personal and national memory, Abad crafts a visual language of resistance that challenges the “official” archives of history.
Marigold Santos meditates on femininity, monstrosity, and migration.
At the Arsenale: Corderie/Artiglierie, Marigold Santos, in collaboration with Rajni Perera, debuts a sculptural intervention that oscillates between the intimate and the unsettling. Their work functions as a meditation on femininity, monstrosity, and migration, depicting bodies as hybrid forms that actively resist fixed identity.
Michael Joo’s site-responsive installation
Michael Joo contributes a site-responsive installation at the intersection of scientific inquiry and philosophical reflection. By probing established systems of knowledge and material perception, Joo offers a cerebral counterpoint to the Biennale’s more overtly narrative gestures.
Martha Atienza’s work is part of the parallel program ‘The Spirits of Martime Crossing.’
At the Palazzo Rocca Contarini Corfù, participating in the parallel program The Spirits of Maritime Crossing, Martha Atienza presents a moving-image practice that serves as a human-scale anchor to the exhibition’s wider thematic sweep. Her work here extends her long-term engagement with Bantayan Island, Philippines, foregrounding the lived realities of labor and climate survival against the mythic backdrop of the sea.
This momentum extends well beyond Venice into the gallery’s program, marked by Martha Atienza’s The Coconut Tree Methodology opening in Manila this May and a major group exhibition featuring Marigold Santos debuting in New York this August.
Silverlens Galleries is at Lapanday Center, 2263 Don Chino Roces Avenue Extension Makati City 1231, Philippines
