Venice Biennale 2026, Japan Pavilion

One of the most popular displays in the Giardini, popular with both critics and the public, is an exhibition titled “Grass Babies, Moon Babies” at the Japan pavilion. We did not participate in this interactive activity, but I watched it with delight. At the entrance, visitors are offered a life-size artificial baby, apparently weighing about as much as a baby would. They are directed to carry the baby throughout the pavilion, and they are encouraged to change its diaper at a changing station in the building. If they change the diaper, they receive a QR code with a poem based on the baby’s birthdate and related to the twentieth-century histories of Japan, the United States, and Asia. Inside the pavilion is a large jungle gym with more artificial babies climbing all over it, often in perilous positions. Babies also climb up and down ropes and watch tv screens showing film scenes related to Japanese identity.

 The exhibition label addresses the decline in global birth rates, which has been particularly apparent in Japan. Apparently, the artist, Ei Arakawa-Nash, who lives in the United States, recently had a twin babies and has been inspired to encourage more people to have them, a possible mission of this installation.  The babies, recklessly climbing around the pavilion, were so joyous that they made it an amusing and uplifting place to be. One of them was even crouched under a bench outside the pavilion.

 

The Danish pavilion, “Things To Come,” by Maja Malou Lyse, also expressed concern about population decline, but their solution derives from a scientific project that concluded that “immersive pornography could increase male fertility” (exhibition brochure). The video on display was derived from this research; the small part I viewed depicted a series of well-endowed women (evidently porn actors) running topless very bouncily through a forest.. Sorry, I didn't take a photo. Interestingly, my casual impression was that men seemed to spend more time in that gallery than women. Another section of the Danish pavilion displayed containers used to transport sperm, somehow related to “an internet subculture that stages competitive sperm races,” something beyond my ken.