Jakub Jansa, a lecturer at FFA Performance Studio, is exhibiting at the Venice Art Biennale

The Venice Biennale officially opened the Czechoslovak Pavilion on Thursday, May 7, 2026, featuring the exhibition project The Silence of the Mole by an international creative team consisting of Jakub Jansa, head of the Performance Studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts BUT, Slovak artistic duo Alex Selmeci and Tomáš Kocka Jusko, and curator Peter Sit. The installation, combining film, sculptural objects, and architecture, will be on display in the Giardini gardens in Venice until November 22, 2026.

The Venice Biennale is one of the most important international showcases of contemporary visual art. Held every two years, the cultural event provides space for artists from around the world to present their work both in national pavilions and in additional exhibition venues throughout the city.

At the center of The Silence of the Mole exhibition project stands Mr. M., a performer who has spent his entire life portraying a fictional mole character originally intended for children. The installation, combining film, sculptural objects, and architecture, follows a process in which the main character gradually loses control over himself; after years of nonverbal empathy, neither his body nor voice belong solely to him anymore. The project also works with silence as a motif of the moment when imagination becomes an exhausted public mask and asks whether empathy alone can truly serve as a tool for transforming others. The exhibition was conceived as a unified environment resulting from a long-term dialogue among all members of the creative team. Jakub Jansa’s film was developed in direct connection with the spatial sculptural installation by the Selmeci Kocka Jusko duo.

The project was selected by a jury composed of independent experts and representatives of the National Gallery Prague and the Slovak National Gallery as the joint presentation of both countries marking the centenary of the opening of the Czechoslovak Pavilion in Venice. The pavilion was opened in the Giardini park in 1926 alongside the pavilions of France, Germany, and Great Britain. The construction of the state pavilion in Venice represented an important act of cultural representation for the First Czechoslovak Republic. The building was designed by architect Otakar Novotný, one of the key figures of modern architecture. Despite the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, the pavilion remains jointly owned by the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. After twenty years, the two countries agreed this year to once again realize a joint exhibition presentation at the Venice Biennale. The commissioner of the exhibition is Michal Novotný, Director of the Collection of Art after 1945 at the National Gallery Prague.

The Silence of the Mole
Authors: Jakub Jansa, Selmeci Kocka Jusko
Czech and Slovak Pavilion, Giardini, Venice
May 9 – November 22, 2026
Curator: Peter Sit
Commissioner: Michal Novotný (NGP)

Jakub Jansa (1989) is a Czech artist working with film, installation, and performance. In his work, he combines fiction, humor, and grotesque elements with a critical reflection on social structures, power relations, and ideologies. His long-term project Club of Opportunities poetically yet analytically explores themes of class and power. In 2021, he received the Jindřich Chalupecký Award. His works have been presented at the National Gallery Prague, Prague City Gallery, Neue Galerie Graz, Pioneer Works, Anthology Film Archives in New York, and at biennials in Athens and Ljubljana. Together with Julie Béna, he leads the Performance Studio at FFA BUT.

Selmeci Kocka Jusko is an artistic duo formed by Alex Selmeci and Tomáš Kocka Jusko. Their work focuses on the relationship between space, perception, and imagination, creating intermedia installations and object-based works. They explore themes of labor, exhaustion, and slowing down as forms of resistance to the acceleration of the contemporary world. Their work has been exhibited in Prague, Košice, Ostrava, Hamburg, Budapest, Ljubljana, and Tokyo, and they have also created permanent public-space installations.

Peter Sit (1991) is an artist and curator currently working as art director of e-flux journal. Between 2012 and 2022, he co-founded the APART platform, through which he realized numerous exhibition and publishing projects across Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. His curatorial and editorial practice focuses on contemporary art, language, education, and mental health. He is currently working on the research project Art in Times of Anxieties and Depressions.

Source: National Gallery Prague

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Author	Mgr. Tímea Vitázková
Published	2026-05-19 08:35
Link	https://www.vut.cz/en/but/f19528/d329675