An Escape Room at the Venice Art Biennale

No, this is not a literal escape room, in which visitors are locked in a room and must decipher clues to find the key to escape. Instead, the pavilion's titular phrase relates to metaphorical escapes—from norms of national identity, from particular narratives. Angelidakis and curator George Bekirakis are honoring Zak Kostopoulos, a drag artist and Greek-American LGBTQ+ and HIV-positive activist who was beaten to death in Athens in 2018. While Angelidakis describes Escape Room as “a Turbo-Charged Platonic Cave,” the installation's 80s-era techno, neon lights, and distorted mirrored surfaces have led others to say it “feels like entering an S&M club.” 

Befitting Angelidakis's architectural background (he attended SCI-Arc), the pavilion further comments on the Fascist-era architecture of the Greek Pavilion, which was designed by M. Papandréou with a Neo-Byzantine front porch and added to the Giardini in 1934. The interior features columns fragments and soft columns spill out to the front of the pavilion, drawing visitors to the immersive experience inside.