The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia
The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia – “In Minor Keyes”, scheduled from 9 May to 22 November 2026, unfolds under the direction of Pietrangelo Buttafuoco and the curatorship of Koyo Kouoh, with a curatorial team comprising Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira and Rasha Salti (advisors), Siddhartha Mitter (editor-in-chief) and Rory Tsapayi (research assistant). The exhibition is presented across the Giardini and the Arsenale, extending its reach beyond the two main venues through a wider constellation of national participations and collateral events distributed across Venice, the lagoon islands, Forte Marghera and Mestre, reflecting an expanded and decentralised institutional geography.
At its conceptual core, as conceived by Koyo Kouoh, “In Minor Keys” is structured around a series of motifs drawn not as abstract categories but from artistic practices that engage both emotion and intellect. Rather than unfolding in discrete sections, the exhibition operates as a continuous composition shaped by interwoven priorities. The section “Shrines”, which brings into focus figures such as Issa Samb, a mentor and inspiration for Kouoh, and Beverly Buchanan, resists any retrospective framing, instead foregrounding presence, transmission and artistic lineage as active and unresolved. “Processions”, informed by carnival choreographies and Afro-Atlantic gatherings, articulates a dynamic spatial language in which participation within the collective body replaces detached observation, positioning immersion as both method and condition.
“Schools” are conceived as locally rooted yet transnational ecosystems of learning and regeneration, grounded in encounter, shared knowledge and forms of autonomy from market-driven systems. The motif of “Rest” engages with the historical and geological legacies of the plantation, colonial settlement, environmental catastrophe and seismic memory, tracing how these forces persist within artistic practices that address rupture, endurance and transformation through radical and liberatory approaches. “Performances” centres the body as a site of knowledge, memory and collective resistance, including a poetic procession in the Giardini della Biennale, inspired by Kouoh’s 1999 Poetry Caravan, conceived as an act of remembrance and storytelling. In dialogue with griot traditions, poets gather as a chorus, activating spoken word as a collective space of resonance and healing.
The edition brings together 110 participants, alongside 100 National Participations and 31 Collateral Events. Seven countries participate in the Biennale Arte for the first time: the Republic of Guinea, the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, the Republic of Nauru, Qatar, the Republic of Sierra Leone, the Federal Republic of Somalia, and the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, while El Salvador participates for the first time with its own national pavilion.
The Padiglione Venezia – Note persistenti, curated by Giovanna Zabotti with Denis Isaia and Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, features works by Dardust (Dario Faini), Paolo Fantin, Alberto Scordo, and Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. The exhibition unfolds as a sequence of immersive environments that guide visitors through symbolic dimensions of Venice, including its submerged, domestic, mythological and collective layers. The city emerges as a living system shaped by sound, matter and narrative, offering an experiential reading of its structural, historical and lived dimensions.
The Special Projects at Polveriera austriaca, Forte Marghera (Mestre) involve Temitayo Ogunbiyi, Uriel Orlow and Fabrice Aragno, extending the exhibition’s themes onto the mainland through works that invite movement, interaction, play and rest. Ogunbiyi’s sculptural intervention activates spaces of pause and reflection; Orlow’s botanical mappings reframe the exhibition through vegetal knowledge systems; while Aragno reinterprets The Image Book, expanding moving image into a spatial and three-dimensional experience.
At the Applied Arts Pavilion, Arsenale (Sale d’Armi), artist Gala Porras-Kim, in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, explores the complex relationship between cultural artefacts, museum practices and institutional frameworks that classify and narrate historical meaning. The project reflects on conservation processes and the procedures through which curators and conservators construct the significance and function of objects, offering an oblique perspective on the archive as a system of interpretation and power.
The Biennale Sessions – University Project continues for its 17th consecutive year, supporting three-day residencies for groups of at least 50 participants, including students and academic staff, and providing exhibition spaces for free seminars. More than 50 institutions take part, including 24 Italian and 26 international organisations from 14 countries.
At the Bvlgari Pavilion, artist Lotus L. Kang presents layered environments that merge organic, structural and metabolic logics. Working across sculpture, photography and site-responsive installation, her practice reflects on inheritance, impermanence, memory and translation. Through unstable materials and open-ended processes, her work gives poetic form to states of becoming, articulating a continuously shifting relationship between matter, time and transformation.
