Black Seas – Scores for the Sonic Eye. Anca Benera, Arnold Estefán / Pavilion of Romania at Venice Art Biennale 2026. May 8, 2026.

Official description: Black Seas – Scores for the Sonic Eye listens to the Black Sea as a living archive. Through the work of Anca Benera & Arnold Estefán, the Romanian Pavilion is grounded in sustained research into oceanography and ecology in relation to the Black Sea as one of the world’s key historical and geopolitical crossroads. The installation approaches the sea as a repository of latent material states – sediments and anoxic strata, fossil time and suspended life – through which ecological, historical, and political processes persist and recombine. Sound, moving image, and sculptural elements open a field of listening with the Black Sea. “Fed” by the Danube, the Don, and the Dnieper – fluvial systems that carry sediment as much as memory – the sea’s oxygen-starved depths hold traces of empire, extraction, displacement, and ecological change. Beyond the pavilion, the project extends into the Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanistic Research in Cannaregio, where the Black Sea coast enters relation with the Atlantic Ocean and the Namib Desert through industrial circulation and infrastructural afterlives. Across both sites, the work proposes listening as a method: tuning to asymmetrically distributed forces and to futures held in latency, toward languages of solidarity and repair.