VENICE.- One of the world's longest-running international festivals dedicated to media art is continuing its Venetian chapter through 31 August 2026. Hosted at CREA Cantieri del Contemporaneo on the island of Giudecca, CYFEST 17 – Natura Naturans: Human Beings, Nature, Landscape brings together leading international artists whose works explore the intersections of nature, technology, ecology, and contemporary visual culture.
Curated by
CYLAND MediaArtLab in collaboration with Ca' Foscari University of Venice and the Center for Studies on the Arts of Russia, Central Asia and the Caucasus (CSAR), the exhibition examines how artistic practice can offer new perspectives on some of today's most pressing questions, from environmental transformation and climate change to artificial intelligence and evolving relationships between humans and technology.
Founded in 2007, CYFEST has established itself as an international platform connecting artists, curators, engineers, programmers, and researchers working across disciplines. Following its opening in Thessaloniki in late 2025, the festival's seventeenth edition arrives in Venice with an exhibition that bridges historical artistic experimentation and contemporary media practices.
At the core of the project is the philosophical concept of Natura Naturans—nature understood not as a static object but as a generative force in constant transformation. Reflecting this idea, the exhibition places the Frants Family Collection, one of the most significant private collections of twentieth-century Russian and Soviet art, in dialogue with contemporary works employing kinetic systems, artificial intelligence, algorithmic processes, video, sound, and interactive technologies. Together, these works reveal surprising continuities between the experimental ambitions of the historical avant-gardes and today's investigations into digital culture and living systems.
Among the exhibition highlights are Anna Frants' automated kinetic drawings exploring light, movement, and time; Jaanika Peerna's poetic installation reflecting on the fragility of glaciers and climate change; and Tuula Närhinen's speculative works imagining hybrid bird species adapted to plastic-polluted environments. Mariateresa Sartori transforms the wind into the invisible author of drawings generated by an anemometer, while Elena Gubanova and Ivan Govorkov reinterpret the legacy of early twentieth-century avant-garde experimentation through large-scale kinetic installation. The internationally acclaimed collective AES+F contributes works examining identity, embodiment, and perception in the digital era through visually immersive and technologically sophisticated imagery.
The exhibition also includes works by Andy Barrt, Alexandra Dementieva, Alexey Grachev, Sergey Kishchenko, Sergei Komarov & Lidiia Griaznova, Alexei Kostroma, Valery Koshlyakov, Linda Loh, Natalia Lyakh, Dmitriy Shishov, Eric Vernhes, and Mathieu Zurstrassen, presenting a broad survey of contemporary media art practices from diverse cultural and geographical contexts.
Beyond the exhibition itself, CYFEST 17 has developed an extensive public programme in collaboration with Ca' Foscari University of Venice, including talks, performances, screenings, and the festival's participation in Art Night Venezia. Highlights included the 50th edition of LASER Talk CYLAND, dedicated to hybrid ecologies emerging at the intersection of natural systems, technology, and culture, Andy Barrt's sculptural performance The Snow Flower of the North, and the third edition of Sleepless Video Art Night, an overnight programme of international video art exploring environmental crisis, collective memory, migration, and possible futures.
By bringing together historical artistic research, contemporary media practices, and interdisciplinary dialogue, CYFEST 17 continues to position Venice as a site for critical reflection on the role of art in an age of technological acceleration and ecological transformation. The exhibition remains on view through 31 August 2026 at CREA Cantieri del Contemporaneo.
