Venice Art Biennale 2026

The project The Silence of the Mole will be presented in the year marking the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Czechoslovak Pavilion, and it is precisely this jubilee that inspired the idea of a joint presentation. After twenty years, this year both countries have agreed to realize a joint exhibition presentation at the Venice Art Biennale.

The winning proposal was selected in an open competition by an international jury, mostly composed of independent experts, in June 2025. The authors of the artistic project are the Czech artist Jakub Jansa and the Slovak artistic duo Selmeci Kocka Jusko (Alex Selmeci and Tomáš Kocka Jusko), with Peter Sit as curator. The presentation is organized by the National Gallery Prague (NGP) in cooperation with the Slovak National Gallery. The commissioner is Michal Novotný, Director of the Collection of Art after 1945 at NGP.

Artistic Concept

At the heart of the project is Mr. M., a performer who, throughout his life, has portrayed the fictional character of a mole – a figure originally intended for a child audience. “The Silence of the Mole is a project that explores what happens to imagination when it transforms into a tool of cultural representation. The character of Mr. M. embodies care, creative work, and non-verbal empathy, expressing his relationship to the world. The film, along with the installation, analyzes the process in which the poetic language of imagination transforms into a tool of ‘soft power’,” say the project creators. The motif of a mole’s burrow and the character portraying the mole are also a metaphor for how both small states perceive themselves. Mr. M. functions as a metaphor for imagination, whose meaning is constantly negotiated and challenged. Within the current social environment, the project does not consider silence an abstract state, but examines the mechanisms through which voice and imagination are shaped and limited.

The installation, combining film, sculptural objects, and architecture, traces the process in which the main character loses control over himself; after years of non-verbal empathy, his body and voice cease to belong to him. The project also works with silence as a motif of when imagination becomes an exhausted public mask and raises questions about whether empathy alone can be the sole tool for transforming others. The exhibition is created as a unified environment, which is the result of a long-term dialogue among all members of the creative team. Jakub Jansa's film is created in direct relation to the spatial sculptural installation by the duo Selmeci Kocka Jusko, and the individual components cannot be separated.

The authors Jakub Jansa, Alex Selmeci, and Tomáš Kocka Jusko add: “The theme chose us. We reflect on our feelings, context, conditions, and the time in which we are preparing the project. We work with how objects communicate with the viewer and how people move within the installation. We are interested in how much time they spend in the space and what they will think about – although this process is always unpredictable to a certain extent.” Curator Peter Sit perceives the project as a whole that transcends the Central European context: “The theme is very current and understandable. It reflects situations we are experiencing worldwide today, and viewers can relate to it from different perspectives.”

The Silence of the Mole

Authors: Jakub Jansa, Selmeci Kocka Jusko

Curator: Peter Sit

Commissioner: Michal Novotný (NGP)

Jakub Jansa (1989) is a Czech artist working with film, installation, and performance. In his work, he combines fiction, humor, and grotesqueness with a critical reflection on social structures, power relations, and ideologies. His long-term cycle Club of Opportunities poetically yet analytically addresses questions of class and power. In 2021, he won the Jindřich Chalupecký Award. His works have been exhibited at, among others, the National Gallery Prague, GHMP, Neue Galerie Graz, Pioneer Works, and Anthology Film Archives in New York, as well as at biennials in Athens and Ljubljana.

Selmeci Kocka Jusko is an artistic duo consisting of Alex Selmeci and Tomáš Kocka Jusko. In their work, they focus on the relationship between space, perception, and imagination, creating intermedia installations and collections of objects. They explore themes of work, exhaustion, and deceleration as forms of resistance to the acceleration of the contemporary world. They have exhibited in Prague, Košice, Ostrava, Hamburg, Budapest, Ljubljana, and Tokyo, among other places, and have also realized permanent installations in public spaces.

Peter Sit (1991) is an artist and curator, currently serving as the art director of e-flux journal. From 2012–2022, he co-founded the APART platform, with which he realized a number of exhibition and publishing projects in Europe, the USA, and the Middle East. In his curatorial and editorial practice, he focuses on contemporary art, language, education, and mental health. He is currently working on the research project Art in Times of Anxieties and Depressions.

Michal Novotný has been the Director of the Collection of Art after 1945 at the National Gallery in Prague since 2019 and the Commissioner of the Czech Pavilion at the Venice Biennale since 2024. He also teaches at the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design in Prague. His research focuses on the identity of Central and Eastern European art. His recent projects include the exhibition of the new collection at NGP 1939–2021: The End of the Black and White Era with Eva Skopalová and Adéla Janíčková, a collaboration with the Centre Pompidou for the MOVE festival: Intimacy as Resistance at the National Gallery in Prague and Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the project Flower Union at the European Council in Brussels, both in 2022.

More about the Czech and Slovak Pavilion in Venice here.

Press release and photos for download here.

The website of the National Electronic Tool, where the tender documentation for the competition is available, is here.

The project will be realized with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic, and J&T Banka.