The Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art is happy to announce that Natalia Sielewicz has been selected as the curator of the Estonian Pavilion at the 61st La Biennale di Venezia. In 2026, Estonia will be represented by the painter Merike Estna with the exhibition titled The House of Leaking Sky.
Art historian and writer Natalia Sielewicz has begun working as a curator together with Merike Estna in preparation of the Estonian exposition at the 2026 La Biennale di Venezia. Regarding Estna’s work, she says: “When I first encountered Merike Estna’s work, I was struck how she allows the medium to slip beyond the confines of a fixed object. What excites me most is her audacity to move beyond a ready-made product for Biennale consumption transforming it into a mirage, a locus of desire, and a multilayered archive”, adding: “Collaborating with Baltic artists allows me to engage with shared histories, to challenge inherited narratives, and to participate in a vibrant artistic discourse that continues to redefine itself, as I have done previously in my curatorial work.”
Natalia Sielewicz works as chief curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Her curatorial work engages with themes of feminism, the politics of affect, and the impact of technology on contemporary subjectivity. In her practice, Sielewicz navigates the boundary between the personal and the universal, frequently turning to autofiction as a curatorial strategy. At the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, she has curated numerous exhibitions, including The Dark Arts. Aleksandra Waliszewska and the Symbolism of the East and North (2022, with Alison Gingeras), Agnieszka Polska: The Thousand- Year Plan (2021), Paint Also known as Blood: Women, Affect, and Desire in Contemporary Painting (2019), The Ministry of Internal Affairs: Intimacy as Text (2017), and Private Settings. Art After the Internet (2014).
In The House of Leaking Sky, Merike Estna transforms the exhibition space into an open studio. Throughout the biennale, visitors witness a painting coming into being, a question that has long preoccupied the artist: how to collapse the boundary between art and maintenance, between the elevated and the everyday. Estna begins with a monumental blank canvas she will gradually saturate with colour and form. She allows the work to seep into daily life, to move laterally, communally, and with care. Paint leaks, bleeds, and strays, mirroring the title of the exhibition and the way Estna’s practice slips across performance, routine, and shared space. Living in Venice for the duration of the biennale with her family, Estna entwines the labour of the artist with that of the mother, quietly challenging the myth of solitary genius and the obsession with permanence that has long shaped the medium. Estna’s performative gestures are heightened by the venue – a former church turned community center – where a frescoed ceiling, an inverted sky, looks down onto a floor marked with basketball lines. Sacred and civic, private and public, fold into one another. The venue is currently operated by Patronato Salesiano Leone XIII and is located in the near vicinity of Giardini.
Merike Estna lives and works in Tallinn, Estonia and in Mexico City, Mexico. She graduated from the painting department at the Estonian Academy of Arts (BA, 2005) and from Goldsmiths, University of London (MFA, 2009). She has received several Estonian art awards, among them the Hansapank stipend (2004), the Eduard Wiiralt Grant (2005) and Konrad Mägi Prize (2014). From 2017–2023, she was an associate professor at the Department of Painting at the Estonian Academy of Arts and a professor of contemporary art since 2025. Estna was among the recipients of the national artists’ salary between 2020 and 2022.
Participating since 1997, this will be the fifteenth time Estonia will be exhibiting at the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. The Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art is the official representative of the Estonian exposition and it is funded by the Estonian Ministry of Culture.
Link to the press image (Credit: Silver Mikiver)
Press contacts:
Kaarin Kivirähk kaarin@cca.ee
Keiu Krikmann keiu@cca.ee