The 54th Venice Biennale - in pictures

Early visitors to the biennale, which opens this Saturday, walk past naked figures in the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, part of The World Belongs to You exhibition
Photograph: Marco Sabadin/AFP/Getty Images

Also at the Palazzo Grassi: Loris Gréaud's haunting creation, Gunpowder Forest Bubble Photograph: Andrea Merola/EPA

Joana Vasconcelos's colourful work fills the atrium at the Palazzo Grassi. Entitled Contamination, it aims to echo the exhibition's focus on positive relationships between cultures Photograph: Andrea Merola/EPA

A piece by artist Yang Jiechang, also part of The World Belongs to You at the Palazzo Grassi Photograph: Marco Sabadin/AFP/Getty Images

A column of smoke snakes heavenwards in Anish Kapoor's installation, Ascension. It's the first time the Basilica di San Giorgio in Venice has been used as the setting for a contemporary art piece Photograph: Marco Secchi/Getty Images

This carved Steinway piano is part of Michael Parekowhai's exhibition at the Palazzo Loredan dell'Ambasciatore, where this year's New Zealand Pavilion strikes a distinctly musical note Photograph: Marco Secchi/Getty Images

Jan Fabre's provocative sculpture depicts a skeletal Madonna holding a dead Christ. Entitled Sogno Compassionevole, it is part of the artist's Pietas exhibition Photograph: Marco Secchi/Getty Images

It might be the British Pavilion, but Turner prize-nominated artist Mike Nelson has gone for a distinctly Turkish feel with his dusty and disorienting installation, a meticulous recreation of an Istanbul caravanserai with labyrinthine passages and low ceilings Photograph: Andrea Pattaro/AFP

Another room in Mike Nelson's labyrinth at the British Pavilion. 'The transformation is complete,' says Guardian art critic Adrian Searle in his review, 'we are elsewhere, between cultures and between times, in a wholly believable fictional reality' Photograph: Andrea Pattaro/AFP

Tanks and top-class gymnasts are the order of the day in this unusual performance piece by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, the two Puerto Rican artists in charge of the US Pavilion Photograph: Andrea Pattaro/AFP

'Art is not cosa nostra' – this is the democratic message intended by art critic Vittorio Sgarbi, curator of the Italian Pavilion, who has invited writers and thinkers – rather than art curators – to suggest which artists he should show Photograph: Andrea Merola/EPA

Artist Christian Boltanski in front of his installation, Chance, at the France Pavilion – a mixture between fairground ride and sober meditation on fate Photograph: Luigi Costantini/AP

Artist Farhad Moshiri with Life is Beautiful, a seemingly cheerful artwork which on closer inspection is made from a host of knives plunged into the wall Photograph: Marco Sabadin/AFP/Getty Images