Venice Biennale 2026: In Minor Keys

The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys by Koyo Kouoh, which will run at the Giardini, the Arsenale and in various locations around Venice.

After the premature passing of Koyo Kouoh in May 2025, with the full support of her family, La Biennale di Venezia decided to carry out her Exhibition, with the purpose of preserving, enhancing and widely disseminating her ideas and the work she pursued with such dedication to the very end. Koyo Kouoh, nominated as the Artistic Director of the Visual Arts Department in November 2024, already developed the curatorial project, defining its theoretical framework, selecting the artists and the artworks, designating the authors of the catalogue, determining the graphic identity of the Exhibition and the architecture of the exhibition spaces, and establishing a dialogue with the artists invited to participate. In Minor Keys is the title chosen by Koyo Kouoh for the 61st International Art Exhibition, as specified in the curatorial text, which was sent to the President of La Biennale on 8 April 2025. The Exhibition will be realised with the contribution of the team selected by Koyo: Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira and Rasha Salti (advisors); Siddhartha Mitter (editor-in-chief); and Rory Tsapayi (research assistant). During the presentation in Venice, at Ca’ Giustinian, headquarters of the La Biennale di Venezia, they were the ones who outlined the work carried out together with Koyo for the 61st International Art Exhibition. This work culminated in a significant meeting held in Dakar in April 2025 at RAW Material Company — the cultural center founded by Kouoh — and led by the Curator herself. That experience remains emblematic of the way she conceived curatorial practice: grounded in relationships and open to the unexpected. “That week in Dakar – stated Koyo’s Team - was the edifying week that defined the 61st International Art Exhibition. We mapped practices and projects, we identified resonances, affinities, synchronicities and conversations, we extracted motifs to structure the exhibition and pillars on which to draw it. Notions like enchantment, seeding, commoning, and generative practices that invite collectivities, emerged organically. On the last day of our convention, after reckoning that we had accomplished the most daunting milestone, Koyo assigned missions to each of us. The exhibition had found its manifest forms, it was no longer intention, nor abstraction. We could hear the music she so gracefully composed with us, under the generous guardianship of the mango tree.” Koyo’s Team, with members based in different cities around the world — Gabe in London, Marie Hélène between Dakar and Berlin, Rasha between Beirut and Marseille, Rory in Cape Town, and Siddhartha in New York City — has in recent months continued the work of producing the Exhibition, engaging La Biennale in a special effort during the project’s development phase, particularly the Visual Arts Department. Remote work through online meetings, combined with in-person seminars held in Venice in May and October 2025 and in Dakar in June 2025, enabled the Team to work alongside the Biennale while being distributed across several continents. This gave rise to an intense, multilayered, and deeply shared process, in which each contribution enriched the collective construction of the Exhibition.

What to expect:
Multi-disciplinary, Film / Video, Performance / Live Art, Prints, Installation, Drawing, Painting, Digital, Mixed media, Architecture, Photography, Sculpture