Venice verdicts: art world figures give their thoughts on the 2026 Biennale – The Art Newspaper

Naomi Beckwith, deputy director and chief curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Basis

Seeing In Minor Keys was beholding the fierce urgency of somebody who has bought to get going actual quickly (see additionally: the maximalist post-war displays by Okwui Enwezor; Noah Davis’s cascade of proposals for the Underground Museum, Los Angeles; Bisi Silva’s infinite, but loving, reproaches in opposition to what she termed “cultural terrorism”). The result’s a polyphony of propositions, essentially the most salient of which is a survey of post-war African artwork with a much-needed, multi-generational concentrate on girls from Werewere Liking to Ranti Bam. The exhibition provides an alternate route by artworks, eschewing each the trail of prestidigitations and medical distillations.

I think most guests weren’t musicologists; few would perceive what a minor key results or symbolises. However Kouoh, in establishing a musical metaphor, requested us to look and pay attention, requiring a shift in our art-consumptive behaviour. We’re requested to take a special bodily place, to connect ourselves firmly to the earth, and think about completely different standards for artwork. The exhibition is a peri-spiritual challenge, which asks the viewers to think about a murals mediating between the previous and current and the residing and the lifeless—not merely mediating between concept and type.

A serious a part of any exhibition is what occurs round it as a lot as what’s on view inside designated galleries. I arrived in a Venice the place artists assisted one another on their installations and cared for one another’s appetites and grooming habits. Proud mother and father and cousins fawned on gravel paths, greeting new-found mates with a familial heat sorely wanted as guests moved below the gaze of elevated safety and police presence.

Beatrix Ruf, director, Hartwig Basis

Koyo Kouoh’s In Minor Keys Biennale felt much more “main” than minor to me. The 5 curators celebrated the artists she selected—a lot of them unfamiliar to many people—with magnificence, respect and a stunning sense of concord, nonetheless holding in it battle, protest and political urgency.

It was putting to see what number of nationwide pavilions and creative initiatives responded to the In Minor Keys theme each politically and poetically. Questions of the human situation and presence permeated the works, whereas motifs of water, fluidity and ephemerality recurred all through. I believe particularly of the Indian and Uzbek contributions, for instance. Very defining was the sheer variety of pavilions absolutely dedicated to performative practices: Florentina Holzinger’s intense and uncompromising Austrian pavilion; Miet Warlop for Belgium; the Dutch pavilion’s shutting down of its personal structure; Gabrielle Goliath, whose work—excluded from her nation’s pavilion—appeared as an alternative in a close-by church; the contemplative soundscape of the Holy See pavilion in a surprising cloister backyard; and contributions by Tarek Atoui, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Sophia Al-Maria, Alia Farid and Fadi Kattan within the momentary Qatar tent.

In a sort of double-take recognition, one is very struck by Sung Tieu’s intervention on the façade of the German Pavilion. By masking it with tiles referencing a now-defunct housing block the place the Vietnamese had been compelled to dwell after German reunification, she dissolves the constructing’s traditionally loaded presence right into a refined monument to a neighborhood first exploited and later uncared for by each German governments.

Opening week means infinite strolling, and even then, one nonetheless hasn’t seen all of it. However I used to be glad to not miss the very vital present of Lydia Ourahmane, the immersive Canicula movie installations of the Fondazione Bulgari, the sensible Paulo Nazareth exhibition at Punta della Dogana, and the darkish and deep Helter Skelter exhibition by Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince at Fondazione Prada.

Diana Campbell Betancourt, creative director, Samdani Artwork Basis

Koyo Kouoh didn’t make exhibitions to “present issues”—she made exhibitions to empower and embolden individuals to make nice artwork and rework their worlds. She made exhibitions to open doorways that had been beforehand closed to many artists till just lately. In Minor Keys is not any exception. Koyo would by no means use a finances to construct a wall—she would tear down partitions and alter how partitions are constructed (as you see within the exhibition design). Most of the artists within the present additionally construct or have constructed establishments, from RAW Materials Firm to Linda Goode Bryant, Denniston Hill and others.

Koyo tasked her curatorial group with persevering with to encourage artists and produce them collectively in Venice to problem the constraints of fascinated with the world in black and white phrases. So I believe loads of what In Minor Keys will do will come from the ripple results of the relationships that artists made with one another in constructing this present. Personal philanthropy stepped in to make this artist-centric curatorial dream doable. As the author Siddhartha Mitter stated, “Koyo would by no means enable her Biennale to be scrappy.”

I imagine different curators had been impressed by this strategy to open doorways for artists, such because the Indian pavilion the place I met the artist Skarma Sonam Tashi, who had by no means left India earlier than taking part within the Biennale. Past the primary exhibition, this version of the Biennale was about what it means to be alive and the stakes of humanity in 2026 (fertility, mortality and mourning: Japan, Denmark, Bahamas), which is why we see a lot “dwell artwork” on a big scale (Belgium, Austria, Netherlands), works about mysticism and spirituality (Holy See, South Africa), and protest (protest indicators built-in into the artworks of the primary exhibition). Considered one of my favorite collateral exhibitions was Darkness Seen: The Lengthy Shadow of Dictatorship, an exhibition by Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires on the fiftieth anniversary of Argentina’s navy dictatorship. Simply as artists had been protesting on the 61st Biennale, this exhibition, which exhibits the hunt for freedom in one other context by earlier artists, stays all of the extra related.

Ekow Eshun, author, curator, broadcaster

I used to be very struck by the primary pavilion within the Giardini. I believed that it was actually powerfully choreographed as an exhibition. It appeared to me a present that took as a starting level, or not less than as an inspiration, Édouard Glissant’s concept of “Tout-Monde”, or “Complete World”, which basically is a world with out hierarchy. It’s a world with out geographic or geopolitical energy constructions, a world the place the West doesn’t come first. And this, I believe, was one of many issues that Koyo possibly was making an attempt to precise, however actually I learn as an articulation in that house. So what does it appear like to proceed by a world the place the worldwide south or the worldwide majority speaks as clearly, as loudly, as eloquently, as profoundly as the remainder of the world: because the North, because the West? And the presumption right here is, all can converse in dialog.

The top end result isn’t essentially concord—as an alternative what you get is a refrain. Nonetheless, a refrain of voices, an attunement, a set of variations: main keys and, certainly, minor keys, taking part in in opposition to one another. For me, this was exhilarating. You stroll into the primary house, the primary house you go into, the place the partitions are clad in indigo material, and there’s a way of those artists looking and talking of a wider world. After which I like the way in which that the present radiated out from that central house, even to the extent that the color of the partitions has completely different shades of blue that begin to ripple out from there—you could have conversations which might be going down between the artists.

And clearly inside all of that, there may be additionally the opposite theme or threnody, which is the mourning for Koyo, that takes place all through the present. And that mixture of wanting and looking and inquiring after which remembering, and even mourning, I discovered very transferring. I discovered the exhibition total to be a piece that spoke in private phrases, political phrases, poetic phrases and lyrical phrases.

Francesco Manacorda, director, Castello di Rivoli

We actually want to evaluate In Minor Keys utilizing utterly completely different parameters.

I don’t suppose we will choose it as an exhibition, we have to choose it as a technique of rebuilding. There’s an incredible phrase in Italian that doesn’t actually translate into English, which is rimarginare. That is if you’re speaking a few wound that’s therapeutic, and rimarginare is the thought of the entire of a wound as its margins, and subsequently when the wound is absolutely healed, the margins usually are not there anymore. And I believe that’s what’s happening with this sequence of exhibits: eliminating the margins and getting the West to recalibrate and reimagine what it means to have a visible tradition that isn’t centred on our system however shared throughout completely different cultures. And because of this the system actually wants to alter, so we will’t simply use the identical parameters, like, “Oh, Daniel Birnbaum’s exhibition was higher”, as a result of this can be a bigger challenge of which In Minor Keys is only one of many steps. There will likely be extra chapters in Venice and past that may proceed this rimarginare course of.

As a result of that is essentially an extended work of adaptation and never an episodic factor, it signifies that the establishments have to alter as effectively. Museums are a Western invention and the market can be a Western invention: the truth that the whole lot must be linked to a reputation, and that that title must be recognisable, these are all issues that should be revisited. Then inside In Minor Keys I completely cherished the thought of the engagement with the faculties and with inspirational figures. However there have been additionally nice single artworks, each by well-known artists like Walid Raad, Otobong Nkanga and Kader Attia, but additionally by some I didn’t know, like Large Chief Demond Melancon, Mohammed Joha from Gaza or Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka from Canada.

Among the many nationwide pavilions, the Holy See actually did lots for me. The expertise of the backyard with the music was transformative, it was a phenomenon, and the mixture of the magical custom with the brand new compositions was a very non secular expertise. Though I didn’t discover the Indian pavilion very resolved, I cherished all the opposite Indian initiatives all through the town: Amar Kanwar within the Palazzo Grassi; Dayanita Singh within the state archives and in addition Nalini Malani within the Magazzini was unbelievable. Then I believe Chiara Camoni made one of the best Italian pavilion in my reminiscence; and a closing shoutout for Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s actual masterpiece within the fantastic movie exhibition Canicula.

Tai Shani, artist

Like most, I miss believing that contexts just like the Biennale may provide a 3rd house, the place art-making and appreciation allow us to attain past our positions to search out commonality and open new horizons. In recent times, this has felt more and more untenable. The rifts are actually so profound, basic and existential that our variations can’t be accommodated anyplace.

Venice this yr made that lack of a shared imaginary unimaginable to disregard. It was introduced into stark aid by the protests throughout the Biennale. The one-day strike on 8 Could, known as by ANGA [Art Not Genocide Alliance] and native unions, was the biggest within the Biennale’s historical past, but wilfully underreported. Twenty-seven pavilions had been absolutely or partially closed, a monumental show of how strongly the individuals who type the material of those contexts really feel. “If I Should Die”, the poem by the late Palestinian poet and professor Refaat Alareer, killed in Gaza, opens In Minor Keys. Palestine and the engulfing world emergencies had been in all places: within the strike, within the mass protest, within the earlier resignation of the Worldwide Jury, and within the gestures made with scant instruments to take an moral place and attain for ethical readability.

What Koyo Kouoh’s exhibition is doing feels vital. Its curation and politics articulate the urgency of decentring empire, refusing a Western canon or chronology and centring artists from the worldwide south, the diasporas and the margins of dominant artwork historical past. This resonates with a wider geopolitical shift, and it felt vital that it was there. The West has by no means been a majority, and its cultural and imperial dominance was, and is, contingent on unspeakable violence. There isn’t a censoring that.

The Biennale has at all times carried actual which means for me, however its limitations have been uncovered. The genocide has laid naked an enormous rift: on one facet artists, curators, writers, artworkers; and on the opposite the structural mechanisms for exhibiting and producing the work. One thing has to shift.

Hammad Nasar, curator, author and director of programmes and content material, Ibraaz

There isn’t a confusion as to what Koyo Kouoh and her group stood for, and who they stood with. Guests are greeted within the Giardini by the artist group Fierce Pussy’s deconstructed Palestinian flag and Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova’s concrete origami deer. Within the Arsenale, the primary encounter is with Refaat Alareer’s affecting poem “If I Should Die”, earlier than being enveloped inside a mesmerising multi-sensorial set up by Khaled Sabsabi (the Lebanese Australian artist chosen, then controversially dropped, and finally reinstated to characterize Australia).

Amidst a dense grasp, the mezzanine of the curated exhibition within the Giardini sings with an arresting juxtaposition of painting-collage-sculpture hybrid works that play with concepts of refuge: on a regular basis life on empty cardboard bins (Sohrab Hura); unreliable narrations of Yasser Arafat’s nightly altering beds (Walid Raad); and evocative landscapes of Gaza constructed from discarded supplies (Mohammed Joha). There was house for “colleges”—shape-shifting, artist-centric establishments—contained in the exhibition. That solidarity and company was reciprocated outdoors by the silent protests of artists and cultural employees carrying T-shirts bearing names and works of artists from Palestine; after which prolonged to the town within the louder strike co-ordinated by ANGA.

The nationwide pavilions ranged from the dramatic clarion name of Florentina Holzinger’s bell ringing within the Austrian pavilion to Dana Awartani’s quietly highly effective survey of threatened heritage websites throughout the Arab world in unfired bricks within the Saudi pavilion. Exterior the “official” Biennale, Gabrielle Goliath’s Elegy, the cancelled South African pavilion (full disclosure: it involves Ibraaz in London in October), is a haunting act of mourning. Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s investigation into the usage of a sonic weapon to disperse silent protests in Serbia is a part of the superb Canicula, and Lydia Ourahmane’s absolutely functioning pier (from the exhibition 5 Works) will finally serve a public park in Poveglia. These works ring in all of the keys—partaking absolutely with the world as we discover it.

• Venice Biennale, till 22 November