VENICE, 2026
A Critical Presentation at the 61st International Art Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia
On Friday, 28 August 2026, TEON stood in Spazio Berlendis, Cannaregio — a space in Venice once inhabited by Friedrich Nietzsche — for a critical presentation of her work Reasons within the Grenada National Pavilion, as part of The Poetics of Correspondence, the exhibition curated by Daniele Radini Tedeschi, with Susan Mains as commissioner.
The presentation took the form of a conversation with art critic Dr. Valentina Minniti, held before an audience of curators, collectors, and members of the international press. The room filled to capacity — a moment of unexpected, quiet recognition for a practice built, until recently, almost entirely alone.
THE WORK
Reasons — mixed media on 3D canvas, 50 × 80 cm, 2026 — continues an inquiry TEON has carried since fully dedicating herself to art in 2024: what does matter hold, once a body has given everything it had to give?
Layers of acrylic, structural paste, and gold leaf are built, scraped back, and rebuilt, until the surface itself carries the memory of its own making. A figure emerges from the gold ground — not quite present, not quite gone.
Writing on the work, art critic Sofia Amati observed that Reasons “can be thought of as an act of resistance — memory against time: a fleeting, dissolving trace that continues to assert itself, denying those who remain the right to forget.”
THE PLACE
There is a particular resonance to presenting this work in a room once occupied by Nietzsche. Of the many pavilions and exhibitions TEON visited across the city that week, few offered the same quality of stillness she found in Spazio Berlendis — a stillness she has come to associate directly with the weight of the space’s own history.
The evening closed with an unexpected summer storm over Venice — a moment, she says, “everyone in that room will remember fondly. Even the storm, in its own way, had its own strange beauty.”
IN HER WORDS
“I don’t paint what I see. I paint what remains.”
“I do not give answers. I give surfaces. And I trust each of you to bring your own reasons.”
A YEAR IN THE MAKING
Venice arrived at the close of an extraordinary year: a Menzione di Merito from Progetto d’Autore 2026 at MAXXI — National Museum of 21st Century Arts, Rome; a presentation at the Carrousel du Louvre, Paris; and exhibitions across Cannes, Barcelona, and London. A solo exhibition is planned for 2027 at B² Atelier, Chelsea, London.
TEON is self-taught. She built a first career in business before choosing, in 2024, to follow a need she could no longer set aside.
The evening closed with an unexpected summer storm over Venice — a moment, she says, “everyone in that room will remember fondly. Even the storm, in its own way, had its own strange beauty.”
Photography and critical text by Dr. Valentina Minniti, courtesy of Start Group / Spazio Berlendis.