VENICE.- The open-air installation Nabatele, a floating synagogue designed by artist and architect Anna Kamyshan, premiered as a collateral event of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.
The project is curated by Maria Veits and Yevgeniy Fiks, and organised by the Montreal Jewish Museum.
On a huge rock suspended in the air, exposed to the forces of nature, a floating synagogue hovers above the city of Venice. Visitors to the Biennale Arte 2026 will be able to witness, day and night, this symbol of eternal light in the sky shining out over the Arsenale. The Venetian synagogues of the 16th Century were confined to a building’s upper floors, where they remained inconspicuous and unseen. Nabatele, too, inhabits an elevated plain. But unlike those houses of worship of the past, this temple shines proudly for all to see.
The project recalls René Magritte’s painting The Castle in the Pyrenees (1959), in which a gigantic stone, surmounted by a castle, levitates above stormy waves, an image often interpreted as unmoored hope and suspended safety. In the same way, Nabatele (a Yiddishized word of Slavic and Semitic origin meaning “call attention to” or “alarm in times of danger”) responds to current global uncertainty, marked by conflict and division, in which wandering is sometimes the best refuge.
A symbol of ineffable solidity, Nabatele is a temple for all. Visible to all.
Built as a double-membrane helium-filled balloon, the installation can rise up to twenty-five metres. The upper part, the suspended synagogue, retains the presence and precision of real architecture, evoking a concrete place of worship, transposed into the air. Beneath it, the floating rock preserves roots and fragments of stone, the simulacra of a land of belonging.
On windy days, Nabatele settles on the water’s surface, while in calmer conditions it floats freely, sometimes low towards its mooring, sometimes high in the sky, in constant dialogue with the atmosphere.The piece also reflects the artist’s complex identity: Ukrainian with Jewish and Russian origins.
Anna Kamyshan says: “Nabatele explores the tension between gravity and buoyancy, the gentle effort of existing uprooted. Whether the structure ever had roots or a foundation, or instead always floated freely above the ground; whether it seeks a place to land or prefers its airy autonomy… these questions remain a mystery. The constant light from the synagogue windows symbolizes for me that inner flame that is not extinguished by any turbulence, and that persists in instability.”
Curators Maria Veits and Yevgeniy Fiks say: “Central to the project is the concept of Yiddishland: a non-territorial cultural continuum preserved through language, memory, and transmission rather than land or sovereignty. Nabatele does not simply represent Yiddishland - it embodies it, materializing its diasporic form of belonging and giving presece to a peoplehood untethered from territory.”
Conceived as a traveling installation, Nabatele will continue its journey beyond Venice, visiting leading cultural institutions and public spaces around the world.
Nabatele is organized by the Montreal Jewish Museum, a cultural institution recognized for innovative exhibitions and public programs that explore Jewish history, culture, and contemporary life in Canada and internationally.
“We understand the project as a point of connection over the long-term,” says Alyssa Stokvis-Hauer, Artistic Director of the Montreal Jewish Museum. “Conceived to travel, Nabatele seeks to broaden its cultural reach and foster dialogue across communities and cultures. These goals are what led our museum to organize the project as a Collateral Event at the 61st International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia and become its future North American host.”
Anna Kamyshan is a London and NY-based architect, artist, and curator of Jewish heritage, originally from Lviv (Ukraine). She creates work that explores complex spiritual, future-oriented, playful, and dreamlike visions, ideas, illusions, and spaces. Anna co-created the vision for the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center and its 100‑year plan - the Landscape Horizontal Museum concept for the site in Kyiv - working under the artistic direction of Ilya Khrzhanovsky. The project focuses on the idea of living memory and healing through nature and the celebration of life, and includes the Mirror Field, the Babyn Yar Synagogue by Manuel Herz, the Crystal Wall installation by Marina Abramović, the Kurgan of Memory Museum by SUB, and numerous other works. Among her projects: Glimpse into the Past, an installation in Kyiv opened by the President of Ukraine in 2021; her poetic vision of the Moscow River received the Wax Bee Prize at the 2019 Milan Triennale, and she later participated in the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, where her piece Being Friends With A River was featured in Voices (Towards Other Institutions) by 2050.plus and received a Special Mention.
In 2022, Anna co-founded Mriia, an initiative imagining the long-term future of Ukraine beyond the nation-state concept. She was a research fellow at the Charles Jencks Foundation and the School of Advanced Study at UCL.
