OK, we are so seriously proud of this!

You know how when artists get together, we can’t stop opining about art stuff to each other?

Well, now we, and YOU, have our own MAGAZINE to OPINE our heads off IN PRINT.

Introducing the inaugural issues of Banana Panic!

This first issue is dedicated to varied reactions to the recently opened Venice Biennale, and future issues will cover the art world near and far.

We want you to read our MAGAZINE, and to send us your thoughts, opinions, questions and reviews!

ORDER BANANA PANIC HERE!

SO, one of the many irresistible oddities of the Venice Art Biennale is the tradition of many of the larger exhibitions producing free tote bags to accompany their exhibitions.

Ever since since we  have been going to the opening week of said event (which we commenced to do when we were, as they say, almost young), these tote bags have been transformed by the magic fairy dust of scarcity and pretention into OBJECTS OF EXTREME DESIRE for the hoards of well-off people in attendance.

It is at once weird and yet sort of adorable that people with resources and inclination to travel to a major international art fair fetishize such a quotidian object to the extent that they will push and shove their way thru crowds to obtain them.

This in turn has led to many exhibitions limiting the free bag give aways to preferred special visitors, which of course has increased to frenzy among the less special visitors to score bags.

This state of affairs has presented The Strange Minds of The Biennial Project with cascading creative opportunities.

First – We endeavor to out accomplish the other bag hunting nutcases by accumulating AS MANY BAGS AS POSSIBLE on each trip. Bag hunting in Venice is fun! This year was especially challenging since the most desirable exhibits were extremely difficult to pry out of the cold dead-ish hands of the staff. We had to resort to begging in a few instances, but it was worth it! See some of our recent haul at left.

Next, what to do with all these silly bags once we are home?  Well of course have our Many Talented Designer Friends design Fabulous Bag Couture Garments!!!!! It is SO much fun to see what our Many Talented Designer Friends will come up with! Couture Creations below by the talented Amir Daher Zeidani, Wallasauce and Mary Lewis Chiodo.

Then, don our Fabulous Bag Couture Garments while in Venice. Wearing Fabulous Bag Couture Garments is fun!

After that, produce Biennial Project Bags, fill them with Biennial Project Swag, and stage fun bag giveaway events for the bag hunting masses. Performing is fun!

Lastly, enjoy seeing OUR BAGS ALL OVER TOWN!

Repeat. The important thing in this world is to find important work to do, and to do it with gusto.

61 phrases pulled from Venice Biennale press releases to use as it pleases you. Share your creation with us and we will vote for the most florid, the most 1% of them all.

PHRASES

• a sweeping corpus

• a corpus of work

• a black void

• subjective encyclopedia

• multisensory environment

• true randomness

• twinned sonic liturgy

• site-responsive methodologies

• minoritised languages

• anoxic depths

• radical resistance

• obscurantist myths

• infra-small signs

• the immediacy of the now

• seemingly opposing elements

• euphoric-kinetic synthesia

• chromatic opulence

• epistemic disobedience

• teleological suspension

• spatial espace trouvé

• an accrual of tangible creations

• future-retrospective

• the image economy

• late-modern notions

• critical epistemological realm

• sensorial response

• examination of the vernacular

• unreviseability (sic)

• folly-cum-zootrope

• an eruptive flash of presence

• post-Cartesian medial space

• a materialist challenge to Newtonian ontology

VERBS

• inhabit a space

• dialogue with

• interplay

• guided by a poetic associative logic

• destabilized

• rooted in

• holding memory

• constructing narrative

• evokes archetypes

• resists monumentality

• invites

• stems from an artistic practice

• brought into proximity

• unfolds

• reframing

• interrogates

• de-contextualizing and recontextualizing

• resonates strongly

• practice

• unpacks

• bears witness

ADJECTIVES

• post-sovereign

• synaesthetic

• phantasmal

• liminal

• evocative

• transgressive

• polyphonic

• multiperspectival

ENTRANTS SO FAR:

The 2026 Biennial Project Bridgade at the Venice Biennale produced so much ART WORK!

We created videos of our performances, photo essays, new Venice Biennale Bag Couture Fashions, a brand new art criticism review BANANA PANIC, a catalogue of our own Biennial Exhibition, and a bunch of other stuff!!!

At Future Lab[s]s Gallery, “the funkiest gallery in the Berkshires”, we hosted an exhibition of work we produced in Venice.

It was a blast to celebrate the art with the artists and an adoring public! Here are some pics!

WOW, The opening week of the Venice Art Biennale is really, really fun!! Receptions and Parties and the like all week long!

SERIOUSLY, enough fun to warm our hearts until the next time around! In the meantime, enjoy the pics!!!!!!!

As per usual, The Venice Art Biennale 2026 did not lack for either ART OR SPECTACLE!

FEAST YOUR EYES!!!

AND WATCH THIS COOL VIDEO ABOUT THE AUSTRIAN EXHIBIT:

The recent opening of Venice Art Biennale has forced us to think a little, on a question we find vexing. Many people want to ban Russian artists from participating in the Biennale. And many many people want to ban Israeli artists. Both understandable points of view.

But we wonder why no one ever suggests banning the US artists. The U.S. government has been a tool for devastating cruelty and destruction at home and around the world for a really long time, and now participates without even a fig leaf of sanity or morality as billionaires worldwide unite in the race to destroy our planet. We wouldn't blame you for hating us, really, really hating us (American artists). And for not wanting us around at all. The trail of tears produced by our government circles the globe many times over. We get why you hate us.

The thing is, we (The Biennial Project artists, as well as nearly all the artists we know) utterly oppose all these horrifying actions being taken in our name! So in Venice we premiered a group performance entitled Canaries in the Coal Mine.  Design by Charlene Liska, Photo by Paul Weiner, Text by Barbara Revelle, Video by Katherine Sweetman, Performance by The Biennial Project Venice Biennale 2026 Players.

We came across the water with yellow in our hair

You look at us like strangers, we feel your rightful stare

We know the weight we carry, we know the anger’s real.

We’ve watched it from within our homes,

We’ve felt what you now feel.

We are not the flag, we are not the throne,

We are not the hands that harm in a name not our own.

We are breath and doubt, we are voice and plea.

Do not turn away the art that is trying to be free.

Art is not a border, it does not march or kill,

It doesn’t write the orders. it does not bend the will.

Artists are not governments, we do not make their wars.

We paint against the silence, we open broken doors.

We are not the flag, we are not the throne.

We are not the hands that harm in a name not our own.

We are breath and doubt, we are voice and plea.

Do not turn away the art that is trying to be free.

Maybe where you’re standing, you’re fighting something too,

Maybe in your country they do not speak for you.

Maybe all our voices are buried under power.

Maybe this is just the time we find each other now.

We are not the flag, we are not alone,

We are not the hands that harm, we are not the throne.

We are breath and doubt, we are still here.

If you hear the canary sing, then you know we’re near.

The Biennial Project organized another of their Cool Art Biennales in conjunction with the 2026 Venice Biennale!

FOR THE FIRST TIME, this year they published a high quality art catalogue of all the accepted work!

To celebrate this beautiful catalogue, they hosted a book signing WITH THE CURATOR inside the grounds of the main exhibition space during the cooler-than-cool opening press week!

The stars aligned perfectly and it was extraordinarily successful!

Watch the wonderful video that film-maker Katherine Sweetman made of the event:

”Strange mountains”, a solo show of 24 new works by Dalila Sanabria (April 3^rd – 29^th at the Eclipse Mill Gallery) includes recent sculpture and drawing informed by the spirit of rasquachismo – the Latinx aesthetic of “making the most of least.” Working with salvaged and repurposed materials, Sanabria uses wood, ash, metal and found objects to create a haunting, dystopian landscape where the human presence is reduced to disembodied cast hands poking out of totemic, rough planks of wood.

Another reference that informs the show is Jacques-Louis David’s 1787 painting The Death of Socrates, pictured at the entrance to the exhibit. Sanabria’s rough-hewn columns and use of bronze are a dystopian nod to the neoclassicism of David’s depiction of Socrates’ martyrdom. The hunks and pillars of charred, distressed wood create a terrain of tragic ruin, bringing up the past of Greek civilization and the future of ours. Sanabria furthers this acknowledgment of Socrates by using hemlock wood throughout.

The largest piece in the show, The Lean, a maonstruction of wood, cables, silicone and acrylic, suggests a brooding futuristic beast. Near it is Fuente, a hollow black block with two hands positioned at the edge of a deep shaft, signaling futility.

Other hands abound, poking out of wood. Most suggest variations of defeat. But in one piece, Ojala, the hand points above, the forefinger raised in a gesture of defiance and determination, the hand of hope.

In its totality, viewing Sanabria’s work seems like entering a forest of totemic slabs where life has been whittled down to its most brutal essence. In the gallery silence, you could mistake it for a graveyard. Despite this, Sanabria’s vision is rooted in life; the power of her work is its message to fight no matter how high the odds, if only to never be forgotten.