The 61st Venice Biennale is about to start in less than two months, and countries are actively preparing for this important international art event. This year’s Pavilion of Ecuador will present the exhibition Tawna & Oscar, marking the collaboration between Oscar Santillán and the Tawna collective, an Ecuadorean anti-colonial collective formed by Kichwa, Sápara, and mestizo artists.
Tawna is a collective founded in 2017 in the Ecuadorian rainforests with a mission of broadcasting the themes of memory, resistance, and embodied living experiences through art. The collective’s name is borrowed from an ancestral tool that is used to propel canoes, which holds a symbolic value of a mechanism connecting territories and people across Amazonia. Among its members are Sani Montahuano, Enoc Merino, Mukutsawa Montahuano, Boloh Miranda, Ipiak Montaguano, and other talented artists sharing multidisciplinary, experimental Indigenous narratives with the world.
Oscar Santillán is a vivid Ecuadorian artist who experiments with art at the intersection of science, ancestral technologies, and embodied sensuality. Starting as a writer, Santillán later shifted his focus to art and emerged as a self-taught creative, further pursuing formal education at ITAE and completing an MFA in Sculpture at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in the United States. His recent artistic innovation is the “anti-world” concept, which transcends the physical boundaries set by human frameworks and opens the multiplicity of possible imagined scenarios.
The commissioner of Tawna & Oscar at the Pavilion of Ecuador is the Museum of Anthropology and Contemporary Art (MAAC), which is the cornerstone cultural institution in Ecuador. It specializes in the archeological and modern heritage of the country, bridging Ecuadorian historical memories and present-day cultural and artistic practices. The pavilion was created under the curation of Manuela Moscoso, the inaugural Executive and Artistic Director of the Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA), whose primary focus is on relational, political, and embodied artistic methods. Media support is provided by TAtchers’ Art Management.
This year’s Venice Biennale will be the 61st edition of the prestigious international art exhibition, gathering representatives from all corners of the world on a joint platform for self-presentation and cultural dialogue. The 2026 edition holds the name In Minor Keys and is held in the memory of Koyo Kouoh, a curator appointed for this event, who passed away prematurely in May 2025. The exhibition will run across multiple locations in Venice, including the Giardini and the Arsenale, from May 9 to November 22, 2026.
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