Miet Warlop, a Belgian artist known for her avant-garde theater work, is representing Belgium at the 2026 Venice Biennale with a performance-installation titled "IT NEVER SSST." The project transforms the Belgian Pavilion into a chaotic, sensory-filled space where performers climb wooden structures, bang drums, and break plaster boards inscribed with multilingual text, reflecting the noise and misunderstandings of contemporary life. Curated by Caroline Dumalin, the pavilion blurs the line between theater and visual art, with live performances occurring only part of the time while sculptors continuously remake plaster reliefs throughout the Biennale's run.
This matters because Warlop's inclusion signals a significant blurring of boundaries between the Venice Biennale's traditionally separate disciplines of visual arts, dance, and theater. Her work challenges the art world's conventional categories, as she is one of several theater-oriented artists—including Florentina Holzinger (Austria) and Dries Verhoeven (Netherlands)—featured prominently this year. The pavilion also represents a departure for Warlop, who for the first time creates a project designed to remain vibrant even when not actively performed, raising questions about how performance art can sustain itself in a museum context.