About Dream Stream
The exhibition, Dream Stream, at the China Pavilion at BIENNALE ART 2026, the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia opened on May 8. It is hosted by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People’s Republic of China, with the Art Museum of the China Academy of Art (CAA) serving as the curatorial institution. Led by Professor Yu Xuhong, President of CAA and Director of CAA Art Museum, the curatorial team reveal the Eastern cultural lineages in the digital age.
Dream Stream (Mengxi) takes its name from Dream Stream Essays (Mengxi Bitan) by Shen Kuo, a scholar of the Northern Song Dynasty. Completed in the eleventh century, the Dream Stream Essays documents, in a notebook style, its author’s observations and reflections on the myriad phenomena of the natural world. It contains some of the earliest accounts of scientific phenomena such as the camera obscura and supernova explosions, alongside refined critiques of painting, calligraphy, and poetry. This mode of “observing things to investigate their underlying principles”, together with a cosmological vision of the “unity between humanity and the universe”, constitutes the distinctive intellectual and spiritual texture of the essay collection.
Titled Dream Stream, the China Pavilion takes stream as its guiding metaphor and dream as its experiential horizon. In dialogue with the introspective tone of the Biennale’s overarching theme In Minor Keys, it unfolds a poetics of fluidity to articulate a conversation between Eastern philosophy and contemporary art. Forging the past and present into a living site of art-science symbiosis, the exhibition uses natural imagery as its foundational vocabulary and transmedia expression as its mode of inquiry, allowing traditional sensibilities to be revitalized in the digital age.
When the Chinese classical triad of “Firmament, Earth, and Human” is transforming into a new existential framework: “Firmament, Earth, Human and Algorithms”, what role does art play? The integration of art and science opens new frontiers for creation and points toward the future. Breaking through conventional boundaries, the exhibition brings together calligraphy, moving image, installation, digital narrative, and cutting-edge technologies, highlighting such compelling moments as the philosophy of light and shadow, the unity of mind and brush, the meditative gaze across long handscrolls, and the interconnection between heaven and earth.
Read more about Dream Stream here.
About BIENNALE ARTE 2026
The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia – titled In Minor Keys by Koyo Kouoh – runs from Saturday 9 May to Sunday 22 November 2026 at the Giardini and Arsenale venues, in various locations across Venice and at Forte Marghera. With the full support of Koyo Kouoh’s family, La Biennale di Venezia decided to carry out her Exhibition. It will do so by following the project just as she conceived and defined it, with the purpose of preserving, enhancing and disseminating her ideas and the work she pursued.
