Morocco’s Venice Biennale debut takes shape as a 300 sq m installation in the Arsenale
Morocco will appear at the Venice Biennale in 2026 with a site-specific installation by Amina Agueznay, a Moroccan artist and trained architect whose work brings together craft, architecture, and the language of memory. Installed in the Arsenale, the project marks the country’s first participation in the Biennale and unfolds as a meditation on how artisanal knowledge survives through collaboration.
Agueznay worked with more than 130 artisans across Morocco, including weavers, beadworkers, and embroiderers. The majority were women, and some have been part of her practice for decades. Their labor and materials moved through Casablanca, Marrakech, Souss-Massa in southern Morocco, and the Atlas Mountains near Rabat, giving the installation a geography as layered as its subject.
The work is framed as an inquiry into the transmission of Morocco’s traditional craftsmanship and shared memory. It also pays tribute to the land and communities that sustain those traditions, aligning with Koyo Kouoh’s Biennale theme, In Minor Keys. Rather than treating craft as static heritage, Agueznay presents it as something lived, exchanged, and continually remade.
At the center of the installation is the concept of the threshold, or âatba, a passage between inside and outside, private and public, sacred and profane that is central to Moroccan vernacular architecture. That idea gives the work both symbolic and spatial force. It is not only something to look at, but something to enter.
Agueznay has also built in a practical dimension: visitors can sit within the installation and rest, allowing the piece to function as a place of pause as well as contemplation. In that sense, the work extends beyond display. It asks how architecture can hold memory, how craft can carry history, and how an exhibition space can become a form of hospitality.
As Morocco steps onto the Biennale stage, Agueznay’s installation suggests that the country’s presence will be defined less by spectacle than by the quiet authority of making.
