Curated by Dries Van Noten, Patrick Vangheluwe with Geert Bruloot.
Late last year, I was contacted by Dries Van Noten and his team, who invited me to contribute two sculptures to his forthcoming exhibition, opening in April 2026. The exhibition was to be held at the extraordinary late-15th-century Palazzo Pisani Moretta on the Grand Canal in Venice, during the wider Venice Biennale. I felt incredibly honoured to be included.
Brainstorming with the team, we immediately knew that STIFLE (2008) would be perfect — a white racing pigeon sculpture presented beneath an antique glass dome, from the collection of a long-term collector based in London, who was of course delighted to loan the work. In the exhibition, STIFLE has pride of place in the Piano Nobile’s Salone delle Feste, the grand central room with its eleven extraordinary glass chandeliers, alongside a spectacular Christian Lacroix feather and satin gown and a Comme des Garçons voluminous creation.
Together with the team, we also decided that I would create a new pheasant feather sculpture specifically for the exhibition, housed within a bronze cabinet. I started work immediately. Normally, I would allow around five months to make a piece on this scale, but I had just four months, with Christmas in the middle of it all. It was intense, but I felt strongly that I wanted to make the most beautiful and intricate work I could — something that would feel right within such a historic and extraordinary setting, and for the inaugural exhibition of the Fondazione Dries Van Noten.
As many of you may know, I work on a floating houseboat studio on the River Thames, so for the work to be made on water, to travel from the River Thames to La Serenissima, and finally arrive at the Palazzo by boat, along the Grand Canal felt completely magical.
Text from the Fondazione Dries Van Noten website
Fondazione Dries Van Noten presents The Only True Protest Is Beauty, on view from 25 April to 4 October 2026 in Venice. Inspired by activist Phil Ochs, the title frames beauty as a catalyst for intensity, provocation, and transformation.
Curated by Dries Van Noten, Patrick Vangheluwe with Geert Bruloot, the Presentation considers craftsmanship as a language of expression and a conduit for emotion. Works from fashion, jewellery, design, art, photography, glass, ceramics, and material experimentation move beyond the boundaries of traditional disciplines, responding to one another to challenge assumptions, unsettle expectations, and reveal the profoundly human dimension of making.
Within the rooms of the historic Palazzo Pisani Moretta, the pieces engage with the building and with each other. As visitors move from the ground floor through the Piano Nobile levels, over two hundred objects resonate with ceilings, frescoes, and ornamental details, forming interactions that unfold with rhythm and intuition. Affinities emerge and contrasts ripple through space, each composition carrying the tension between mastery and discovery, between reflection and provocation. The Palazzo itself becomes an active participant, guiding perception and shaping the relationships between forms, materials, and histories.
Beauty here is not a fixed ideal but a questioning presence. Making becomes a process of discovery, a dialogue that carries the traces of intention and imagination. Visitors move through moments of resonance and disruption, where perception awakens and possibilities unfold, and craft reveals itself as an ongoing process of inquiry and encounter.
WEAVING CRAFT AND CREATIVITY
Housed within the extraordinary late-15th-century Palazzo Pisani Moretta, overlooking the Canal Grande, Fondazione Dries Van Noten places craftsmanship at the centre of creative and cultural exchange. Ideas take shape through material, gesture and the process of making, bringing together tradition and contemporary practice.
Opened in April 2026, the Fondazione presents established and emerging voices across art, design, fashion, architecture, food and beyond. By bringing different disciplines into dialogue, it creates connections between past and present, local and international perspectives, and encourages new ways of thinking about creativity and craft.
https://fondazionedriesvannoten.org/en
https://www.instagram.com/fondazionedriesvannoten/
San Polo, 2766
30125 Venezia (VE)
Italy
The Only True Protest Is Beauty features the works of:
Adeline Halot, Alexander Kirkeby, Ann Carrington, Armand Louis, Arthur Vandergucht Audrey Guimard, Ayham Hassan, Bruno Amadi, Bruno Barbon, Chris Fusaro, Christian Lacroix, Codognato, Comme des Garçons, Ettore Sottsass, Hubert Duprat, Isaac Monté Joris Laarman, Joseph Arzoumanov, Joyce J Scott, Julien d'Ys, Hyeokjin Jung, Kaori Kurihara, Kate MccGwire, Katsuyo Aoki, Kiko Lopez), Lionel Jadot, Lilla Tabasso, Lisa Immordino Vreeland, Lukas Wegwerth, Max Lamb, Misha Kahn, Monika Rościszewska, Moreno Schweikle, Nifemi Marcus-Bello, Odile Gilbert, Pao Hui Kao, Peter Buggenhout, Rebecca Manson, Richard Štipl, Ritsue Mishima, Seongil Choi, Sophie Buhai, Steven Shearer, Takuro Kuwata, Tony Cragg, Václav Cigler, Virginia Leonard, Vladimir Slavov Wendy Andreu, Xavier Mañosa.