11 May 2026

LOOK UP VENICE — FROM TIMES SQUARE TO THE BIENNALE

We are honoured that Michel Haddi has been invited to the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia

What began above the streets of Manhattan is now crossing the Atlantic.

After the remarkable reception of Look Up Times Square, Michel Haddi’s contribution to the LOOK UP movement has been selected to travel — and its next destination is one of the most storied stages in contemporary art: the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, presented in collaboration with the European Cultural Centre.

Michel Haddi at Venice

Returning to the spotlight is legendary photographer and director Michel Haddi. Following the viral success of his Tupac Shakur film in Times Square, Haddi will debut an expanded program for Venice. Visitors to the Biennale will experience not only the iconic Tupac footage but also five additional short films, offering a deeper dive into Haddi’s unparalleled cinematic archive.

A Movement Born from a Single Question

LOOK UP did not begin as a campaign. It began as a feeling.

Curator Rachel D. Vancelette found herself pausing — caught in the particular stillness that sometimes arrives in busy lives — and sat with a deceptively simple question: What does it mean to look up?

From that private moment of reflection grew an open invitation, extended to artists and creative voices across the world. Each was asked to offer their own interpretation. The results were as varied as the people who answered the call — intimate, political, abstract, cinematic — but united by a shared impulse: to encourage audiences to pause, to lift their gaze, and to reconnect — with their surroundings, and with one another.

Palazzo Mora, Venice

The exhibition is housed at Palazzo Mora, one of Venice’s most distinguished historic residences. Situated on the Strada Nova in the district of Cannaregio, the palazzo was constructed in the 16th century and acquired by the Mora family in 1716. Its noble floor features frescoes attributed to Giambattista Tiepolo, painted between 1720 and 1770 — gilded ceilings that have looked down on centuries of Venetian life.

To show contemporary moving image work within these walls is to place the present in conversation with the past — exactly the kind of dialogue that LOOK UP invites.