Glasstress 2026: Berengo Studio, Fondazione Berengo, Ca’ Tron – Venice, Fondazione Berengo Art Space – Murano
Following its most recent Venetian edition in 2024, GLASSTRESS returns to the Venetian lagoon.
Conceived by Adriano Berengo in 2009 as a collateral event of the Venice Biennale, the international project is now regarded as one of the leading platforms dedicated to contemporary experimentation in glass.
From July 12 to November 22, 2026, GLASSTRESS once again brings new energy to Venice with an exhibition spanning the historic Palazzo Ca' Tron on the Grand Canal and the Fondazione Berengo Art Space on Murano. Developed between Murano and Venice, the exhibition creates a journey through a wide range of practices and artistic languages, from sculpture to performance, from design to immersive installation, exploring the expressive and transformative potential of glass as a contemporary artistic medium.
The exhibition features more than 50 international artists and designers invited to engage with the centuries-old art of glassmaking through collaboration with the master glassmakers of Berengo Studio. The 2026 edition also introduces new collaborations with more than twenty artists making their GLASSTRESS debut, many of whom are working with glass for the very first time, resulting in innovative and unprecedented experiments.
Curated by Adriano Berengo, Joanna De Vos, and Umberto Croppi, GLASSTRESS 2026 brings together an international roster of artists including Marina Abramović, Ai Weiwei, Manal AlDowayan, Monira Al Qadiri, Allora & Calzadilla, Vanessa Beecroft, Monica Bonvicini, Stefano Cagol, Edoardo Callegari, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Ornella Cardillo, Judy Chicago, Zheng Chongbin, Tony Cragg, Laura De Coninck, Ida Ekblad, David S. Eley, Leandro Erlich, Jan Fabre, Fariba Ferdosi, Christian Fogarolli, Massimiliano, Doriana and Lavinia Fuksas, Josepha Gasch-Muche, Gelitin, Abdulnasser Gharem, Fathi Hassan, Marlène Huissoud, Martin Janecký, Oda Jaune and Wu Jian'an, Marya Kazoun, Karen LaMonte, Delaine Le Bas, Simone Mannino, Paul McCarthy, Yue Minjun, Serge Mouangue, Moataz Nasr, Adrian Paci, Cornelia Parker, Anne Peabody, Penzo+Fiore, Jaume Plensa, Laure Prouvost, Arne Quinze, Fatinha Ramos, Tobias Rehberger, Maria Roosen, Thomas Schütte, Sean Scully, Marinella Senatore, Wael Shawky, Shan Shan Sheng, Chiharu Shiota, Joana Vasconcelos, Ronald Ventura, Ernests Vītiņš, Ziping Wang, Rose Wylie, Erwin Wurm, Guan Xiao, Raed Yassin, Dustin Yellin, Sun Yitian, and Qi Zhuo.
Among the participating artists, Manal AlDowayan presents The Necklace of Hinat Daughter of Wahbu, a work inspired by a recent archaeological discovery in AlUla, Saudi Arabia: the 2,000-year-old tomb of a Nabataean woman named Hinat. Among her remains, archaeologists uncovered a necklace made not of gold or gemstones, but of date seeds. This unexpected material shifts conventional notions of value, suggesting that what is precious lies not in rarity or permanence, but in the everyday substances that sustain life. For AlDowayan, newly uncovered histories such as Hinat's become a language through which art can engage the past. While archaeology reveals fragments of lived experience, artistic imagination offers a space to contemplate what remains unknown, giving form to stories and relationships beyond the historical record.
Central to survival in the desert and deeply embedded in cultural memory, the date palm appears here as more than a source of nourishment. It becomes a vessel of meaning, connecting generations through shared practices, systems of care, and cultural continuity. The seed, in particular, evokes forms of knowledge often carried through women's lives and transmitted through gestures, objects, labor, and everyday acts of making.
Echoing the open form of Hinat's necklace, a suspended structure of rope descends through space. Within it, hand-formed glass elements shaped like date seeds are produced in Murano and coated with naturally colored sand from AlUla, bringing the landscape itself into the work. Small yet resilient, the seed becomes the narrative anchor of the installation, reflecting on how humble materials can carry collective memory and how histories endure not only through archaeological evidence and written records, but also through imagination, inheritance, and lived cultural practices.