Mark Bradford, one of America’s most acclaimed painters, could not figure out what to put in the grand rotunda. This artist, who is set to represent his country in May at the 2017 Venice Biennale, found an unusual way of working long-distance. In a warehouse in South Los Angeles, not far from where he grew up, he created a full-size model of the Biennale’s United States pavilion, a stately building with echoes of Monticello. Then he spent the last year testing out his ideas in it.

From the glories of ancient culture to darker shades of contemporary conflict, works by Iraq’s most influential artists are to go on display at a major European event expected to draw at least 500,000 visitors. The National Pavilion of Iraq’s exhibition will be staged at the 57th Venice Biennale in May and feature artefacts spanning six millennia from the Neolithic Age to the Neo-Babylonian period alongside the works of eight modern Iraqi artists.

Moscow’s V-A-C Foundation—owned by Leonid Mikhelson, recently named Russia’s wealthiest man—will open a four-story exhibition space and artist residency at the Palazzo delle Zattere in Dorsoduro during the Venice Biennale vernissage. This will not, however, be an outpost devoted to the display of Russian art. [...] the V-A-C space will be defined by the opportunities it offers for collaborative production of new exhibitions and new work—by artists, curators, and visitors from across the geopolitical divides of the world.

As research fellow at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Shoshan has focused on the progressive way that the Netherlands contributes to UN peacekeeping missions.  [...] By linking cultural research to architectural research, the Dutch submission to Venice aims to make visible the spatial challenges and opportunities of this complex situation.

The theme this year is "All the World’s Futures." And in an introduction to the Biennale, the curator, Okwui Enwezor, writes, quote, "How can artists, thinkers, writers, composers, choreographers, singers, and musicians, through images, objects, words, movement, actions, lyrics, sound bring together publics in acts of looking, listening, responding, engaging, speaking in order to make sense of the current upheaval?" 

The South African Pavilion in Venice presents a mix of old and new works. There’s a video of Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings and documentary footage from the Apartheid Museum – such as the sound recording of Nelson Mandela’s Rivonia trial speech, played over and over in a little booth – reminding us that the past is never far away.

Differences between nations and people are being bridged at the Venice Biennale, where India's Shilpa Gupta and Pakistan's Rashid Rana have come together for a unique art project, says Farah Siddiqui.