Cymru yn Fenis/Wales Sownd: Manon Awst and Dylan Huw

The Arts Council of Wales presents a Collateral Event at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, following its last participation in 2019 and marking its 10th exhibition at this major international visual arts festival.

Manon Awst, Dylan Huw and collaborators represent Cymru yn Fenis / Wales in Venice 2026 with Sownd, an exhibition jointly led by Oriel Myrddin in Carmarthen and Oriel Davies in Newtown. Steffan Jones-Hughes of Oriel Davies is Curator, and Catherine Spring of Oriel Myrddin is Exhibition Project Director, both acting as Co-Creative Directors.

The presentation takes place for the first time at the Instituto Santa Maria della Pietà in Castello. La Pietà is a monumental fourteenth-century complex, adjacent to Riva degli Schiavoni and within walking distance of the Biennale Giardini and Arsenale sites. It runs from Saturday 9 May to Sunday 22 November 2026 and is free to visit.

Manon Awst and Dylan Huw’s Sownd is a collaborative sculptural environment exploring the materialities of language and landscape. Conceived as a continuous installation, it brings together organic materials, found objects, texts, and sonic and architectural interventions in response to the Instituto Santa Maria della Pietà.

Everything in the work is sculptural, including language, creating a space where form and meaning are inseparable. Guided by a poetic, associative logic, it gathers fragments into a living exhibition, incorporating material from a parallel site-responsive programme in Wales during Biennale Arte 2026.

Sownd is a Cymraeg/Welsh word meaning both “stuck” and “foundationally sound”, encapsulating the project’s exploration of tension and resilience. This frames an inquiry into how landscapes and languages—particularly minoritised ones—become sites of persistence and vulnerability. The artists draw on research in Welsh peatlands, sticky and unstable environments that conceal and reveal vast material histories. These layered sites of organic matter and cultural memory become a terrain for navigating sedimented histories of language, culture and ecology. The collaboration between Awst and Huw invites connections across borders, informed by Wales’ history of site-specific collective practice and its oral poetic tradition.