Artist Lotus Kang has created a site-specific installation for the Bvlgari pavilion at the Venice Biennale, working across three studios including a temporary Brooklyn warehouse. Her work, which includes unfixed 35mm film on the façade of Spazio Esedra and new sculptures of plaster baby birds and rubber-wrapped tatami mats, explores themes of multiplicity, permeability, and the unfixing of meaning. Kang, known for her installations at the 2023 Whitney Biennial and Chisenhale Gallery, describes herself as a maker of objects and spaces who resists single interpretations.
This commission matters because it marks Bvlgari's deepened commitment to contemporary art: the Italian fashion house is sponsoring the next three editions of the Venice Art Biennale, framing its support as an evolution of patronage that balances heritage restoration with investment in living artists. Kang's work, rooted in her Korean-Canadian background and characterized by hybrid materials and code-switching, exemplifies the kind of boundary-blurring contemporary practice that such corporate sponsorship increasingly enables at major international exhibitions.