Greek artist and architect Andreas Angelidakis has transformed his country's pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale into an installation titled Escape Room, a deliberately provocative work that mixes club culture with political commentary. Speaking to the Guardian while smoking cannabis, Angelidakis explained that the piece is designed to give the historically loaded 1934 pavilion "a voice" and to critique both nationalism and the global rise of the far right, while also expressing his opposition to the very concept of national pavilions.

The installation features a light-up dancefloor, Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax on the sound system and wilted classical columns that reference Picasso's Guernica, the migration crisis and Angelidakis's own sexuality. Other elements include an LED screen alluding to Plato's cave, a souvenir shop, T-shirts commemorating LGBTQ+ activist Zak Kostopoulos (killed in Athens in 2018), riot shields guarding neon eggs symbolising "the fascism that hatched in 1934", and inflatables bearing deconstructed Maga slogans such as "Make Erika Eat Again", a jab at Charlie Kirk's widow. The pavilion, opened at 4.20pm and followed by a queer "tea dance", also honours Vaso Katraki, the only Greek visual artist ever awarded at Venice, who was imprisoned as a communist in 1967. Angelidakis, born in Athens in 1968 to a Greek father and Norwegian mother, describes the far right's attempt to seize global control as a recurring theme drawn from sources ranging from TikTok to ancient history.