08/05/2026
ECHOES
A series of public interventions in Venice during
By Daria Koltsova
From 5–9 May, Ukrainian artist Daria Koltsova presents Echoes, a series of unsignaled public interventions surrounding the Venice Biennale Arsenale in Venice.
The project continues Koltsova’s long-term practice of working with fragile traces, absence, and the ways violence quietly enters everyday space. Her works often begin from what remains after catastrophe: fragments, interrupted rituals, objects carrying memory, or the physical marks left by history on bodies and materials.
In Venice, laundry lines cross the city everywhere. Clothes hanging above the streets reveal invisible narratives about those who inhabit these spaces and how they live. For Koltsova, these suspended garments became both image and language.
The intervention also refers to the Venetian street Tana, whose name originates from the Azov region, historically connected to Venice through the production of rope materials for ships. Through this historical echo, the work creates an unexpected connection between Venice and contemporary Ukraine.
Installed throughout the area surrounding the Arsenale, the project consists of real military uniforms suspended on Venetian laundry lines. The uniforms were donated by Ukrainian artists currently serving in the war, by women soldiers, and by members of the Azov brigade. Many of these garments were worn in combat in some of the most heavily affected areas of the war. They still carry names, marks of use, and traces of injury.
Deliberately, the intervention contains no explanatory text and no author attribution. The absence of framing is central to the work. Viewers encountering the uniforms in public space are left uncertain whether they are witnessing an artwork or the temporary presence of actual soldiers. This ambiguity introduces a subtle but persistent sense of anxiety.
Within the context of the Venice Biennale — one of the most visible events in the international art world — Echoes functions as a reminder that war does not disappear when it leaves the front page.
The intervention can be encountered around the Arsenale, Venice, from 5–9 May 2026.
