Interview with the artist of the enchanting New Zealand Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale

Fiona Pardington, a Māori artist from Devonport (1961), will represent New Zealand at the 2026 Venice Biennale with a deeply spiritual and ecologically conscious installation in the national pavilion. Her project centers on the takahe, a bird long thought extinct, using photography, sound, and immersive space to evoke loss, memory, and transformation. Pardington’s work draws on Ngāi Tahu culture, colonial history, and natural history, featuring a taxidermied takahe specimen from the British Museum that she re-photographed and chromatically restored.

This selection marks a shift in New Zealand’s approach to the Biennale, moving from an open-call model to a curated partnership with Christchurch Art Gallery and a commercial gallery. Pardington’s pavilion matters because it foregrounds Indigenous knowledge systems and ecological grief at a major global art event, offering an alternative to spectacle-driven national presentations. Her focus on extinction, museum ethics, and spiritual connection resonates with broader conversations about decolonization and environmental urgency in contemporary art.