The Angolan pavilion, representing the nation of Angola, has participated in the Venice Biennale since 2013. As one of the biennial international art exhibition's national pavilions, Angola mounts a show in a Venetian palazzo outside Venice's Giardini. The first Angolan pavilion, which featured the photography of Edson Chagas, became the first African national pavilion to receive the biennial's top prize, the Golden Lion for best national pavilion. Chagas displayed poster-sized photographs of resituated, abandoned objects and weathered architecture in the Angolan capital of Luanda. Reviewers praised the interplay between the photographed subject matter and the Italian Renaissance artwork that adorned the hosting palazzo's walls. The 2015 Biennale hosted a group show of five Angolan artists on themes of intergenerational dialogue. Background The Venice Biennale is an international art biennial exhibition held in Venice, Italy. Often described as "the Olympics of the art world", the Biennale is a prestigious event for contemporary artists known for propelling career visibility. The festival has become a constellation of shows: a central exhibition curated by that year's artistic director, national pavilions hosted by individual nations, and independent exhibitions throughout Venice. The Biennale parent organization also hosts regular festivals in other arts: architecture, dance, film, music, and theater. Outside of the central, international exhibition, individual nations produce their own shows, known as pavilions, as their national representation. Nations that own their pavilion buildings, such as the 30 housed on the Giardini, are responsible for their own upkeep and construction costs as well. Nations without dedicated buildings, such as Angola, create pavilions in venues throughout the city. Prior to the pavilion's establishment, Angolan artists participated in the 2007 Venice Biennale's "African Pavilion", curated by Fernando Alvim and Simon Njami. 2013 For the 55th Venice Biennale, in 2013, Angola joined nine other countries as first-time participants. The Angolan pavilion exhibition, Luanda, Encyclopedic City, was held in the Palazzo Cini near Venice's Ponte dell'Accademia and featured Angolan artist Edson Chagas's photograph series of abandoned objects and weathered architecture in Angola's capital of Luanda. Chagas displayed his photographs as 4,000 poster-sized prints stacked atop 23 crates throughout the opulent room, lined with opulent paintings and crafts from the early Italian Renaissance. Visitors were invited to take the photo poster prints with the artist's intention that the exhibition would end when the prints ran out. such as Sassetta and Botticelli. The Palazzo Cini had been closed for the previous two decades,