Venice 2026 | Hugh Hayden at San Giacomo | Exhibitions

Status

In Gallery Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-154437

During this year's Biennale, Hugh Hayden unveils a monumental new work, a full-scale, slanted chapel skewed forty degrees forward, rises on San Giacomo. The brick structure, topped with a green metal roof and a ten-meter steeple reminiscent of regional campaniles, blends American and Italian architectural vernaculars into a universal archetype of belief, power, and endurance. Within, an inhabitable sanctuary with pews and a reimagined crucifix is conceived as a space for reflection. Above, the tower houses a locally cast bell with a founding inscription of “Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin,” a resonant invocation of The Three Little Pigs. The chapel builds on previous works such as Huff and a Puff (2023), his slanted cabin modelled after Henry David Thoreau’s own, and extends Hayden’s ongoing engagement with fairy tales and fables as narrative frameworks. These stories, rooted in moral instruction and psychological formation, inform the work’s heightened sense of tension and embodiment at an immersive scale.