venice art biennale 2026 curatorial team shares details as koyo kouoh's vision moves forward

everything announced so far for venice art biennale 2026

During the press conference held on February 25th, 2026, at Ca’ Giustinian in San Marco, the curatorial team appointed by the late Koyo Kouoh unveiled the framework of the Venice Art Biennale 2026. Titled In Minor Keys, the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia will run from May 9th to November 22nd, 2026, across the Giardini, the Arsenale, and venues throughout Venice. The pre-opening will take place on May 6, 7, and 8, with the official inauguration and awards ceremony scheduled for May 9.

Appointed Artistic Director of the Visual Arts Department in December 2024, Kouoh had fully developed the theoretical framework of the exhibition, artist selection, editorial structure, graphic identity, and spatial layout prior to her passing in May 2025. With the support of her family, La Biennale di Venezia committed to realizing the project exactly as she had conceived it. The exhibition has since been carried forward by the team she personally selected, including Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Helene Pereira, Rasha Salti, Siddhartha Mitter, and Rory Tsapayi, through an intensive process of online collaboration and in-person seminars in Venice and Dakar, where Kouoh had established her base at RAW Material Company.

In Minor Keys brings together 111 invited participants, including 105 individual artists and collectives and 6 artist-led organizations. The generational span ranges from artists born in 1943 to those born in 1997, foregrounding intergenerational dialogue as a defining dimension of the exhibition. National Participations and Collateral Events will be announced on March 4th, 2026, with the International Jury to follow in April. The Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement will not be awarded in this edition, as Kouoh did not have the opportunity to define them.

Cape Town–based Wolff Architects were appointed to develop the exhibition design and scenography. Central to their approach is the threshold as a spatial and symbolic device. In the Central Pavilion and the Arsenale, sweeping indigo banners descend from the rafters to mark transitions between zones, modulating tempo and atmosphere while preserving the autonomy of each artist’s universe.

portrait of Koyo Kouoh | photo by Mirjam Kluka, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia

in minor keys: A polyphonic model of collectivity

In Minor Keys takes its title from music, where the minor key refers both to a compositional structure and to its emotional resonance. Within the 61st International Art Exhibition, the phrase operates as a curatorial framework grounded in listening, relation, and affect. Conceived by the late curator, Koyo Kouoh, the theme proposes an exhibition attuned to quieter tonalities and lower frequencies, privileging practices that unfold through intimacy, improvisation, and poetic persistence. The project emphasizes the capacity of art to nourish, sustain, and reconnect, foregrounding the sensory, emotional, and subjective dimensions of experience. Kouoh described the Biennale as a ‘polyphonous assembly of art,’ drawing on references from jazz improvisation, Caribbean thought, and the metaphor of the Creole garden, where diverse species coexist within shared ecosystems of protection and exchange.

The exhibition is not organized into conventional thematic sections. Instead, it unfolds through what the team describes as undercurrents: Shrines, Processional Assemblies, Enchantment, Spiritual and Physical Rest, artist ‘universes’ conceived as islands or keys, and Schools, a term reflecting Kouoh’s longstanding commitment to artist-centered institution building. These strands interweave across sites, creating constellations of practices that privilege relation over hierarchy.

Ebony G. Patterson, …fester… 2023. Hand-cut jacquard woven photo tapestry with glitter, trim, tassels, lace, metal, plastic and glass beaded pins on foam and wood armature. White blown-glass plants, black flame-worked glass plants, gold leaf on found plastic
spine, glittered resin vultures, and artist-designed vinyl wallpaper. Dimensions variable, courtesy the artist, Monique Meloche Gallery, and New York Botanical Garden.

special projects, performances, and schools

Beyond the exhibition’s core presentation, In Minor Keys expands through performances, institutional collaborations, and editorial initiatives that reinforce Kouoh’s emphasis on relation and transmission. A procession of poets in the Giardini, inspired by her 1999 poetry caravan from Dakar to Timbuktu, introduces storytelling and collective recital as forms of embodied knowledge. Artist-led institutions, including Deniston Hill in New York, Black Star Lines in Accra, the Contemporary Art Institute in Nairobi, RAW Material Company in Dakar, among others, are presented under the rubric of Schools, reflecting Kouoh’s commitment to grassroots, non-market spaces of learning and regeneration. At the Arsenale’s Applied Arts Pavilion, developed with the Victoria and Albert Museum, Gala Porras-Kim presents a project examining museum conservation and classification systems, while Forte Marghera hosts site-responsive installations that extend the exhibition’s atmosphere of rest, wandering, and sensory attunement into the Venetian mainland.

Mulindwa Peter The Owl Death (1982)

editorial and graphic identity

The official catalogue consists of two volumes: Volume I is dedicated to the International Exhibition curated by Kouoh, and Volume II to National Participations and Collateral Events. Featuring over 100 contributing authors, the publication centers artists through extended spreads that include critical texts and studio materials, alongside eight thematic essays and five literary ‘Invocations.’ The visual identity and catalogue design, created by Clarissa Herbst in collaboration with Alex Sonderegger, draw on komorebi, the shifting effect of light filtered through leaves, rendered through subtle tonal gradients and indigo textile banners that echo the exhibition’s spatial rhythm. La Biennale di Venezia also reiterates its commitment to environmental sustainability, continuing its carbon-reduction strategy through renewable energy use, material reuse, and emission mitigation measures.

Alice Maher, Les Filles d’Ouranos (detail), 1996/2025. Epoxy and polyester resin, moorings, each piece 60 x 50 x 50 cm. Installation variable. Courtesy the artist. Photo Francois Poivret

Alacu Josephine Mother’s Nightmare (1980)

Guadalupe Maravilla, ICE Age Disease Thrower #1, 2025. Courtesy the artist and P·P·O·WGallery, New York

Tammy Nguyen, Love Justice, You Rulers of the Earth, 2025, installation view. Watercolor, vinyl paint, pastel, silkscreen printing, rubber stamping, hot stamping, and metal leaf on paper stretched over wood and gator board panel. Overall dimensions: 144 x 168 x 2 inches / 365.8 x 426.7 x 5.1 cm. Photo Studio Kukla. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London.

Kaloki Nyamai, installation view Kamene Studio. Courtesy Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin

Eustaquio Neves, Arturos, Untitled, 1993–95, photograph, mixed technique. Courtesy the artist

Alan Phelan, Carol Sawyer as Natalie Brettschneider as Leaf as Me 1986, when Ray was really Miller, 2019. Joly screen photograph. Courtesy the artist

Hagar Ophir, A triple alphabet Ouija Board, detail from Bound With The Living, 2024. Photo Moritz Gansen

Lampedusa – 2019 – 270 x 530 cm. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of Galerie Cécile Fakhoury

Mohammed Z. Rahman, Hearthside, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 9–21 September 2025, installation view. Courtesy Phillida Reid, London. Photo Lewis Ronald

Crowd and Insects (1976), C. Driciru

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Manuel Mathieu, Abundance and Drought, 2025. Photo Daniel Bock. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Hugues Charbonneau

Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Bouba 2025 78770018. Photo Andrew Truong. Courtesy Tuan Andrew Nguyen

Big Chief Demond Melancon, Second Chief of the Seminole Hunters wearing the Africa suit, 2011. Courtesy the artist

Manuel Mathieu, Physicality, 2023, 21 ceramic vases. Courtesy the artist and HdM Gallery

Manuel Mathieu, Pendulum, 2023, video installation. Photo Darren Rigo. Courtesy the artist and Gallery TPW

Léonard Pongo, Art Brussels, installation view, 2023. Photo We Document Art. Courtesy Kristof De Clercq

Big Chief Demond Melancon, Sewing Red Cloud and Sitting Bull, 2012. Courtesy the artist

Alice Maher, The Sibyls, 2025. Charcoal, chalk, graphite on Somerset 410 gm paper, each 245 x 152 cm. Acrylic mirrored discs each 90 cm diameter, 36 nickel plated cast bronze sculptures, sizes variable. Courtesy Kevin Kavanagh Gallery. Photo Ros Kavanagh