ST28 Research Notes from Venice

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Looking, Listening, Learning Towards ST2028

What can one of the world’s most established international art exhibitions teach us as we look towards Stellenbosch Triennale 2028?

Long before an exhibition opens, the work begins. There are artists to discover, conversations to have and ideas to test, but there is also value in experiencing how other major cultural events bring art, people and place together.

As part of the research towards Stellenbosch Triennale 2028, Project Director and Founding Trustee Andi Norton travelled to Venice in September 2026 for a research and reconnaissance visit spanning three very different exhibition environments: the Giardini and Arsenale of the Venice Biennale, and the fourth edition of Homo Faber Biennial at Fondazione Giorgio Cini.

The purpose was not to return with a blueprint for Stellenbosch. Venice and Stellenbosch are fundamentally different places, with different histories, audiences and cultural contexts.

Instead, the trip offered an opportunity to look closely: at how art inhabits a place; how architecture changes an encounter; how artists from different geographies are represented; how enormous exhibitions retain moments of intimacy; and how material, light, scale and movement can shape the way a visitor experiences a work.

These are some of the notes brought home:

RESEARCH NOTE / 01

GIARDINI

Context, representation & place

The Giardini has been the traditional home of the Venice Biennale’s International Art Exhibition since its first edition in 1895, but the site itself predates the Biennale by almost a century.

The gardens were created as part of an urban redevelopment programme promoted by Napoleon in 1807. Following the success of the early Biennale exhibitions, permanent national pavilions began appearing in the Giardini from 1907. Today, 29 foreign pavilions sit alongside the Central Pavilion, their different periods and architectural styles forming a remarkable anthology of 20th-century architecture.

It means that experiencing art at the Giardini is never only about what is hanging on a wall or occupying a gallery. Architecture, history, landscape and national identity are present in the encounter too.

For Andi, this made the Giardini an important place to consider the relationship between context, representation and place.

The 2026 Biennale Arte, In Minor Keys, was conceived by the late Koyo Kouoh. Following Kouoh’s passing in May 2025, La Biennale di Venezia elected to realise the exhibition with her team, preserving and developing the curatorial vision she had established.

One of the most striking aspects of the visit was encountering the South African presence within that international conversation.

“It was inspiring to see so many South African artists selected by the chief curator to interpret her powerful message in the Central Pavilion.”— Andi Norton

There was another South African connection embedded in the exhibition itself. Cape Town-based Wolff Architects had been appointed by Kouoh to realise the exhibition design and scenography for In Minor Keys, using spatial thresholds throughout the Central Pavilion and Arsenale to help shape the visitor’s movement between different artistic worlds.

Walking through the Giardini therefore raised questions that extend well beyond any individual artwork:

How does the place in which we encounter art affect the way we understand it?
What does representation look like within a global exhibition?
And how can architecture participate in the curatorial experience rather than simply contain it?

Questions worth carrying home.

RESEARCH NOTE / 02

ARSENALE

Space, scale & exhibition-making

If the Giardini offered a lesson in context and representation, the Arsenale shifted attention towards space, scale and exhibition-making.

The historic Arsenale was once one of the largest production centres of pre-industrial Venice: a vast complex of shipyards and workshops where the fleets of the Venetian Republic were built. The Biennale first opened the Corderie dell’Arsenale to the public for its inaugural International Architecture Exhibition in 1980, and the complex has since become one of its major exhibition sites.

Its industrial history remains unmistakable. Long brick walls, exposed structures, cavernous volumes and seemingly endless exhibition spaces create an environment in which contemporary art must negotiate with architecture of enormous physical presence.

For a research visit looking towards another large-scale exhibition, that relationship between artwork and site was difficult to ignore:

How much space does a work need?
When does scale become part of its meaning?
How do you lead visitors through a large exhibition without dictating every encounter?
And what happens when an exhibition responds to the character of an existing place rather than attempting to neutralise it?

Among the works encountered at the Arsenale was an installation by Kenyan artist Kaloki Nyamai — a particularly meaningful connection for the Stellenbosch Triennale team. Nyamai participated in the Curators’ Exhibition of the inaugural Stellenbosch Triennale in 2020.

To encounter an artist who was part of that first Triennale, within the scale and international context of Venice, offered its own moment of reflection: on artistic trajectories, on the relationships built through exhibitions, and on the importance of creating platforms where artists and audiences can encounter one another.

The Arsenale demonstrated that exhibition-making is not simply a question of selecting work and finding somewhere to put it. The space is part of the conversation.

RESEARCH NOTE / 03

HOMO FABER: AN ISLAND OF LIGHT

Material, making & experience

The final research stop moved beyond the Venice Biennale to another kind of international exhibition.

Andi timed the visit to coincide with the fourth edition of Homo Faber Biennial, An Island of Light, presented from 1–30 September 2026 at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore.

Curated by the Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship under the artistic direction of British artist and designer Es Devlin, the exhibition brought together more than 500 artisans from over 70 countries and more than 700 handcrafted objects.

Rather than organising that extraordinary volume of work as a conventional object-by-object display, An Island of Light unfolded through 15 immersive installations exploring the relationship between light, materials and the human hand. Light moved through water, mirrors and reflective surfaces. Objects shifted between individual pieces of craft and components of larger environments. The architecture and grounds of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini became part of the experience.

For research towards ST2028, Homo Faber offered another perspective entirely. Here, the questions were about material, making and experience:

How can exhibition design encourage someone to look more closely?
How can hundreds of individual objects retain their own identities while contributing to a larger narrative?
How can light, movement and atmosphere transform the experience of a material or form?
And how do you create moments of spectacle without allowing spectacle to overwhelm the work itself?

The strong South African presence among the international makers offered another welcome connection to home.

More broadly, Homo Faber was a reminder that the experience surrounding an artwork or object does not have to compete with it. Thoughtful exhibition-making can draw attention back towards the act of making itself: the hand, the material, the process and the knowledge held within it.

WHAT RESEARCH BRINGS HOME

A research trip does not return neatly packed into a suitcase of ideas ready to reproduce. Nor should it.

Stellenbosch Triennale is shaped by its own place. Its streets, buildings, histories, communities and creative networks create conditions that Venice cannot replicate — just as Stellenbosch cannot and should not attempt to replicate Venice. The value of looking elsewhere lies in the questions it allows us to bring home.

Across the Giardini, the Arsenale and Homo Faber, different ideas repeatedly surfaced: context and representation; space and scale; material and making; architecture and movement; intimacy and spectacle; the local within the international.

There were also reminders that an exhibition begins long before an audience arrives. It begins by looking. By listening. By encountering what other artists, curators, designers and cultural institutions are doing. By noticing what resonates, questioning what does not, and considering what any of it might mean within a completely different context.

Research expands the field of possibility. The work that follows is deciding what belongs in Stellenbosch. And as the thinking towards Stellenbosch Triennale 2028 continues, these are some of the questions coming home with us.