Avital Bar-Shay and Sorin Heller, PhD, curate Belu-Simion Fainaru’s exhibition Rose of Nothingness for the Pavilion of Israel at the Biennale Arte 2026, the 61^st International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.

Avital Bar-Shay

Avital Bar-Shay is a curator, artist, architect, co-founder, and co-director of the Mediterranean Biennale. She was born in 1966 in Israel, where she lives and works.

Her practice unfolds at the intersection of art, architecture, and cultural initiative, combining conceptual thinking with interventions in the public sphere. Over the years, she has exhibited in Israel and internationally, and has developed artistic projects that explore the points of convergence between place and identity, fostering a dialogue among art, society, and the environment.

With a career spanning more than two decades, Bar-Shay is a cultural entrepreneur dedicated to promoting artistic and social initiatives that connect artists, curators, and communities. Her work focuses particularly on advancing art in peripheral regions and developing platforms for cultural dialogue among countries and communities across the Mediterranean. In 2025, she co-curated the exhibition Crossing Borders at the 14^th Havana Biennale.

In 2008, together with Belu-Simion Fainaru, she founded the Mediterranean Biennale—an international platform for contemporary art that brings together artists from across the Mediterranean and beyond. Since 2010, she has served as the Biennale’s curator and artistic producer, leading its artistic and international activities.

In this capacity, Bar-Shay has led the Encounters program, an educational initiative that uses art to foster dialogue between communities. The program is based on meetings between youth, teachers, and educators from diverse Jewish, Arab Muslim, Christian, Druze, and Bedouin backgrounds, held in local communities representing a wide range of religions and cultures. These encounters create an empowering experiential-educational process, bringing participants closer together, increasing awareness of the importance of dialogue and tolerance, and encouraging connections and collaborations among community members. Shared artistic experiences build authentic familiarity and create dialogue as a foundation for a better society.

Photo: Vlad Ursu


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Sorin Heller, PhD

Sorin Heller is a curator, researcher of contemporary art and art museums, cultural institution strategist, and lecturer.

Since 2022, he has served as Curator of the German‑Speaking Jewry Heritage Wing at the Hecht Museum, University of Haifa. Over the course of his career, Heller has curated exhibitions in public museums and galleries, including: Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Janco‑Dada Museum, Ein Hod; Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod; the Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat Gan; and the Museum of Holocaust Art at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem (all in Israel); the Cotroceni National Museum, Bucharest, Romania; and other venues.

From 2006 to 2017, he served as Director of the Department of Visual Arts and Museums for the Municipality of Ramat Hasharon, Israel. Prior to that, he headed the Visual Arts Department at the Omanut La’am Institute of Art and Culture of the Israel Ministry of Education and Culture. Heller has an extensive professional background working with museums and nonprofit cultural institutions, specialising in modern and contemporary art as well as ethnographic and historical displays. He has held curatorial positions at the Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat Gan, and the Haifa Museum of Art, and has also worked as an independent curator. He initiated and curated the Ramat Hasharon Biennial for Young Artists (2008), and curated the Second Biennale of Israeli Ceramics at MUZA, Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv (2002).

Heller holds a PhD in Art History. He has lectured at various institutions and has contributed essays and critical writing to numerous museum exhibition catalogues and art and culture journals.

Photo: Orna Zaken-Heller