ITALY: The Pure Land Foundation supports Venice Biennale gathering exploring identity and self-definition

 

Su Xiaobai’s Alchemical Universe, Public Program, Image courtesy of Su Xiaobai Foundation, photo by kikonauts

Support for Gathering 4 marks the Pure Land Foundation’s growing focus on people who reclaim their identity and the right to tell their own story.

VENICE, ITALY, September 23, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The Pure Land Foundation, established by Bruno Wang, supported Gathering 4 of the Su Xiaobai Foundation’s Orchid Pavilion programme, held at Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel on 5 September during the Venice Biennale.

The event, titled ‘Voice-over, Magic Mirror’, combined a film screening, a public discussion

and participatory creative work. It took place across several rooms of Su Xiaobai’s Alchemical Universe, an exhibition of 35 works spanning the artist’s practice and an official Collateral Event of the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.

The Pure Land Foundation supported the gathering as a whole, including the screening, discussion and participatory programme. The Deer of Nine Colors was produced independently. The event reflects a developing strand of the Pure Land Foundation’s work concerned with people who have been misunderstood, judged or reduced to a single episode in their lives, and with how they recover a fuller sense of who they are.

A representative of the Pure Land Foundation said: ‘We supported Gathering 4 because it opened a thoughtful conversation about who gets to define a person’s identity. The Pure Land Foundation wants to understand how people move beyond the versions of themselves imposed by others and regain authorship of their own story. Art can help us see the complexity of a life and meet it with greater compassion.’

At the centre of the programme was Andrew Thomas Huang’s The Deer of Nine Colors, which follows a Thai trans woman searching for her ‘true name’ through memories and past lives. The film reimagines the Buddhist Jātaka of the compassionate Nine-Coloured Deer through a contemporary, futuristic lens.
After the screening, Huang joined Susie Ferrell of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for a discussion of the film’s treatment of identity, reincarnation and transformation. Media artist Vivian Lin then led creative exercises in other rooms of the exhibition, with Leone Contini and Kyoko Takenaka among the invited contributors.

The exhibition formed part of the experience throughout the evening. As participants moved through Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel, Su Xiaobai’s works provided a changing setting for the screening, conversation and creative activity. Su Xiaobai’s Alchemical Universe is presented by the Su Xiaobai Foundation in collaboration with LACMA. The Orchid Pavilion series is curated by Jenny Lin, PhD, Associate Professor of Critical Studies and Director of the MA Program in Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere at University of Southern California Roski School of Art and Design, and inaugural Su Xiaobai Foundation Curatorial Resident.

Gathering 4 continues the work developed by Bruno Wang through the Pure Land Foundation, using culture and storytelling to consider identity through lived experience. Earlier projects include Queer, Asian & Visible, featuring British-Chinese artist and performer Le Fil, and Buddhist, Queer & Beautiful, featuring Japanese Buddhist monk, makeup artist and LGBTQ+ advocate Kodo Nishimura.

About the Pure Land Foundation

The Pure Land Foundation was established by Bruno Wang in 2015. Through culture, contemplation, storytelling and creative collaboration, it explores questions of meaning, identity, spirituality, wellbeing and shared humanity. Its work draws on Buddhist wisdom while engaging people across different cultures and beliefs.

About the Su Xiaobai Foundation

Established in 2024, the Su Xiaobai Foundation preserves, promotes and interprets the art and archives of Su Xiaobai while supporting artists and scholars engaging with traditional materials, techniques and their contemporary possibilities.

Su Xiaobai’s Alchemical Universe is an official Collateral Event of the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, presented by the Su Xiaobai Foundation in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art at Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel, Venice.