The Venice Biennale art exhibition, among the best-known and closely watched contemporary art shows in Europe, opened to trade visitors on Thursday.
The main exhibition opens on Saturday and runs until November 24.
The German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale showcases works by Israeli artist Yael Bartana and Berlin theatre director Ersan Mondtag.
In addition to the contributions by Bartana and Mondtag in the Giardini, four other artists will be exhibiting on the neighbouring island of La Certosa not far from the Lido: Michael Akstaller, Nicole L'Huillier, Robert Lippok and Jan St Werner.
Together, under the title "Thresholds," they hope to explore how thresholds, steps and borders are dealt with. Based on the present as a transition in which past and future overlap, the contributions also deal with the theme of the threshold as a place between affiliations and communities.
Anyone entering the massive German Pavilion on the Venice Biennale grounds is initially immersed in a kind of post-apocalyptic science fiction work.
With video animations and sculptures, 53-year-old Bartana aims to denounce the current reality of planet Earth on the brink of ecological and political destruction.
The exhibition includes a spaceship called "Light to the Nations" (named after a passage from the Bible) takes several generations of people to unknown galaxies in space.
Bartana told dpa that the great journey is intended to serve collective healing and redemption, with the spaceship and the animations are linked to Jewish concepts and traditions.
"It is simply a metaphor for my attempt as an artist to think about a better future," said Bartana.
If humanity were to leave Earth on a spaceship, Bartana said, the planet might be allowed to recover from current ravages like war, conflict and climate change.
There is also the possibility of new forms of society emerging on the spaceship, which crosses beyond territorial borders and other thresholds, Bartana said.
"We have destroyed so much that we have to leave this place so that the Earth can heal," said Bartana. "Does humanity deserve to be here any longer? But maybe one day the spaceship will come back to Earth and we will have become better people."
Crossing thresholds and borders also plays a central role in Mondtag's work. In his work, the 37-year-old deals with migration and collective memory.
A mound of soil from the Turkish region of Anatolia, where many immigrants to Germany originally came from, lies in front of the massive German pavilion, which was built by the Nazi regime in 1938.
With his work, Mondtag wants to counter the fascist and eternally constructed architecture of the building with a "monument to an unknown person."
Mondtag dedicated his work at the pavilion to his grandfather, who migrated from Turkey to West Berlin as a guest worker in the 1960s, where he was exposed to asbestos at work and eventually died of cancer.
Normally, the German contribution is limited to the pavilion building in the Giardini venue, but this year, for the first time, the works - supervised by curator Çağla Ilk - will also be exhibited outside the pavilion.
It was announced on Tuesday that the Israeli pavilion will not open as planned due to political protest.
The exhibiting Israeli artist, Ruth Patir, announced that she and the curators would not open until an agreement had been reached on a ceasefire in the Gaza war and the release of the hostages held by Hamas.
