Review: The Holy See’s “The Ear is the Eye of the Soul” in Venice

A woman in a black dress and headphones walks down a concrete path covered by a metal arbor — Installation view: The Pavilion of the Holy See, “The Ear is the Eye of the Soul” in the Giardino Mistico, Venice. Photo: David Levene

It takes a lot for an artwork these days to make international headlines, but Florentina Holzinger managed to do it with the Austrian pavilion at the Venice Biennale this past May. The experimental theater director’s SEAWORLD VENICE (2026) became such a smash hit that it became impossible to see at the opening of the biennale after the first press preview day, as lines stretched far into the Giardini. A profile in the New York Times followed and another dropped this week in the New Yorker. When the biennale closes, the piece will go on a world tour. It’s like my father always used to say: never underestimate the power of a naked woman on a jet ski.

The second most talked about pavilion exhibition was “The Ear is the Eye of the Soul,” a sonic prayer organized around Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), presented by the Holy See and curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ben Vickers, with Soundwalk Collective directing the audio. Unlike countries like Austria, the Vatican has no set space for its pavilion and staged this exhibition in the Giardino Mistico dei Carmelitani Scalzi, a walled friars’ orchard pressed against the tracks of Santa Lucia train station.

“The Ear is the Eye of the Soul“
Artists: Various
Venue: The Holy See Pavilion of the 61st Venice Biennale
Address: Giardino Mistico dei Carmelitani Scalzi, Cannaregio 54
Through: November 22, 2026

Though part of a visual art exhibition, this oasis in the bustle and desolation of labyrinthine Venice offers little to look at but the garden. Instead, upon arrival, visitors receive a pair of headsets and a little map that designates geotagged zones of the garden where one can hear compositions by Terry Riley, Laraaji, Jim Jarmusch, Brian Eno, Dev Hynes, Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, Suzanne Ciani, Patti Smith, FKA Twigs, Kali Malone and other experimental musicians known for their looping dreamy qualities.

For me the resulting experience was akin to being a character in a film by Terrence Malick. One watches the wind blow the foliage as a gorgeous soundtrack swells. It’s inevitable that you’re going to think about your life, or at least try to untangle the bombardment of other stimuli to which you’d been subjected in the last few days. Malone is a contemporary organist, and her music is given its own young tree to dance around, a clear demonstration of how these ancient forms can still be molded into new shapes.

There are even stumps where you can sit in the sun, if you’d like to listen to a poem, which may or may not be read in your language. As you approach the chapel, you hear Smith reading a monologue as the Virgin Mary, examining the sexual and romantic emotions that lead to motherhood. Hildegard of Bingen was herself an abbess, poet, healer and composer, who believed in the medicinal qualities of music. Though the experimental tracks loop around they are not generative and were likely not made with so-called artificial intelligence, as Pope Leo XIV has established himself as a leading voice against the technology. The brochure quotes an interview he gave in 2025: “The logic of algorithms tends to repeat what ‘works,’ but art opens up what is possible. Not everything has to be immediate or predictable.”