'It’s a nerve-wracking experience': Isabel Nolan on representing Ireland at the Venice Biennale
Isabel Nolan with part of her Dreamshook project, which will be exhibited at the Irish Pavilion for La Biennale di Venezia from May 9 to November 21. Picture: Marc O'Sullivan
Truman Capote once remarked that visiting Venice was “like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs at one go”. At any time, it is arguably the most magical of cities, and for the next seven months, it will also play host to the world’s largest festival of the visual arts, the Venice Biennale.
Founded in 1895, the Biennale has run every other year since, apart from when delayed by wars or covid-19. This year’s edition is the 61st, and features exhibitions by 100 countries, each installed in a national pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale or the Arsenale, or in palaces, churches and warehouses across the old city.
There is also a huge group exhibition, In Minor Keys, which includes work by 111 artists, selected by the late Cameroonian-Swiss curator, Koyo Kouoh.
For some years now, Ireland’s representative at Venice has been selected through an open competition organised by Culture Ireland and the Arts Council. This year, Ireland is represented by Isabel Nolan, a Dublin-based artist who graduated from the National College of Art and Design in 1995.
She has since established herself as a major force in the art world, with numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Ireland, Europe and America.
Nolan was delighted when she learned that her submission, which she prepared with Georgina Jackson, director of the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin, and arts producer Cian O’Brien, was among those shortlisted for Venice.
“There was a lot of work involved in getting that far,” she says. “But we had then to undergo a rigorous interview. I think there were eight people on the panel, and I hadn’t done an interview since I was at college. And even after that, we went back and forth for a time before we were told we’d been selected.”
Nolan was finally announced as the competition winner in March 2025, and then began the process of actually making her work, which includes drawings, sculptures and hand-tufted tapestries.
“I have a beautiful studio in Temple Bar, and I always have a notebook to hand, as I like to let my ideas percolate,” she says. The drawings she makes herself, while she mostly engages technicians to help complete her sculptures and tapestries, working to her designs.
“I’ve had the same tapestry man for 14 years, and the art fabrication company I use is based here in Dublin. They’re brilliant craftsmen.”
Over the past several weeks, Nolan and her team have been installing her work in the Irish Pavilion at the Arsenale, on the waterfront in the Castello District, which served as a naval shipyard for hundreds of years up to the late 19th century.
“The space is in a beautiful brick warehouse. I’m told it was where they once made ropes for the ships.”
The Biennale opens to the public on May 9, and it is expected that attendance figures will easily match, if not exceed, the 700,000 who visited in 2024. “It’s a nerve-wracking experience,” says Nolan.
“I’ve done a lot of solo shows before, but the Biennale is huge; it’s a major platform, with a global audience. I try not to get too caught up about it, but that said, I’m very happy with my show.”
Nolan’s installation is called , which refers to the sensation of waking from a dream. Much of the work is inspired by the 15th-century Venetian printer and publisher Aldus Manutius, founder of the groundbreaking Aldine Press.
“Manutius wanted to share his books as widely as possible, and he’s generally credited with inventing the paperback,” she says. “He also invented italics and pioneered the use of wide, clean margins, and he printed portable books, small enough that they could fit in your pocket, so you wouldn’t need a servant to carry one.
"But there was a lot more to him than that. He was also a humanist scholar, with an ideology; he wanted to publish classical scholars and contemporary humanist writers.”
An avid reader herself, Nolan has a particular interest in the Christian literature of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. “They tell some incredible stories — about miracles, for instance. You’ll find an account of a saint flying through the air, but told very matter-of-factly. I find that really charming.”
Closer to home, Nolan has taken inspiration from The Book of Kells, the 9th-century masterpiece of Western medieval art held at Trinity College Dublin. “The Book of Kells was something I would have written about while I was a student at NCAD,” she says, “but I was in my twenties before I finally went to see it, with a friend who was visiting from America. A lot of what interests me are the architectural forms and structures in the manuscript.”
Her interest in illustrated manuscripts is partly what informs the bright colours of her wall hanging tapestries, which boast such elegant titles as and .
“But I think the tapestries refer to stained glass as well,” she says. “I like to follow my instincts when I use colour. I go through phases. It’s very intuitive.”
One of the most striking pieces in is a metal sculpture of a curtain blowing in the wind that Nolan calls . “I like the idea of a powerful gust of wind shaking everything up,” she says.
“It’s dynamic. I made it as a line drawing in metal, so it’s playing with the idea of something that’s tough and static having movement. And it creates a room within a room, I think.”
Those who won’t get to visit Nolan’s installation in Venice will have several opportunities to catch it in Ireland in 2027, when it tours to the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin, the Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny, Co Donegal, and Ormston House in Limerick.
Meanwhile, Nolan is already preparing for her next solo show, at the Southwark Park Galleries in London in August. “The itch begins again,” she says, as if nothing could make her happier.
- The Venice Biennale runs until November 22. Further information: labiennale.org, irelandatvenice2026.ie
