Venice verdicts: art world figures give their thoughts on the 2026 Biennale

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 acquired 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 towards what she termed “cultural terrorism”). The result’s a polyphony of propositions, probably the most salient of which is a survey of post-war African artwork with a much-needed, multi-generational deal with girls from Werewere Liking to Ranti Bam. The exhibition presents an alternate route by way of 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 hear, requiring a shift in our art-consumptive behaviour. We’re requested to take a unique bodily place, to connect ourselves firmly to the earth, and contemplate totally different standards for artwork. The exhibition is a peri-spiritual mission, which asks the viewers to think about a murals mediating between the previous and current and the dwelling and the lifeless—not merely mediating between concept and kind.

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 dad and mom and cousins fawned on gravel paths, greeting new-found buddies with a familial heat sorely wanted as guests moved beneath 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 shocking sense of concord, nonetheless holding in it battle, protest and political urgency.

It was placing to see what number of nationwide pavilions and creative tasks 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 shocking cloister backyard; and contributions by Tarek Atoui, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Sophia Al-Maria, Alia Farid and Fadi Kattan within the non permanent Qatar tent.

In a type of double-take recognition, one is particularly struck by Sung Tieu’s intervention on the façade of the German Pavilion. By overlaying 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 delicate monument to a group 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 important present of Lydia Ourahmane, the immersive Canicula movie installations of the Fondazione Bulgari, the good 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 folks to make nice artwork and remodel their worlds. She made exhibitions to open doorways that had been beforehand closed to many artists till not too long ago. In Minor Keys isn’t any exception. Koyo would by no means use a funds 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 workforce with persevering with to encourage artists and produce them collectively in Venice to problem the constraints of eager about the world in black and white phrases. So I believe a variety 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. Non-public philanthropy stepped in to make this artist-centric curatorial dream doable. As the author Siddhartha Mitter stated, “Koyo would by no means permit 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). Certainly 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 army dictatorship. Simply as artists had been protesting on the 61st Biennale, this exhibition, which exhibits the search 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 at the least as an inspiration, Édouard Glissant’s concept of “Tout-Monde”, or “Entire World”, which basically is a world with out hierarchy. It’s a world with out geographic or geopolitical energy buildings, a world the place the West doesn’t come first. And this, I believe, was one of many issues that Koyo possibly was trying to specific, however definitely I learn as an articulation in that house. So what does it appear like to proceed by way of 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 communicate in dialog.

The tip outcome 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, enjoying towards 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 totally different shades of blue that begin to ripple out from there—you will have conversations which are going down between the artists.

And clearly inside all of that, there’s 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 shifting. I discovered the exhibition general 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 fully totally different parameters.

I don’t suppose we are able to 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 whenever you’re speaking a couple of wound that’s therapeutic, and rimarginare is the concept of the entire of a wound as its margins, and due to this fact when the wound is absolutely healed, the margins will not be there anymore. And I believe that’s what’s occurring 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’s not centred on our system however shared throughout totally different cultures. And which means the system actually wants to vary, so we are able to’t simply use the identical parameters, like, “Oh, Daniel Birnbaum’s exhibition was higher”, as a result of this can be a bigger mission of which In Minor Keys is only one of many steps. There might 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 vary as nicely. Museums are a Western invention and the market can also be a Western invention: the truth that every thing must be linked to a reputation, and that that title must be recognisable, these are all issues that must be revisited. Then inside In Minor Keys I completely cherished the concept 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 in addition by some I didn’t know, like Huge Chief Demond Melancon, Mohammed Joha from Gaza or Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka from Canada.

Among the many nationwide pavilions, the Holy See actually did loads for me. The expertise of the backyard with the music was transformative, it was a phenomenon, and the mix of the magical custom with the brand new compositions was a very religious expertise. Though I didn’t discover the Indian pavilion very resolved, I cherished all the opposite Indian tasks 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 the perfect Italian pavilion in my reminiscence; and a last 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 might supply a 3rd house, the place art-making and appreciation allow us to attain past our positions to seek out commonality and open new horizons. In recent times, this has felt more and more untenable. The rifts at the moment are so profound, elementary and existential that our variations can’t be accommodated wherever.

Venice this yr made that lack of a shared imaginary not possible to disregard. It was introduced into stark reduction by the protests throughout the Biennale. The one-day strike on 8 Could, referred to 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 kind 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 international 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 necessary. 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 necessary 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 all the time carried actual that means for me, however its limitations have been uncovered. The genocide has laid naked an enormous rift: on one aspect artists, curators, writers, artworkers; and on the opposite the structural mechanisms for displaying 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 workforce 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 hold, 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 containers (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 “faculties”—shape-shifting, artist-centric establishments—contained in the exhibition. That solidarity and company was reciprocated exterior by the silent protests of artists and cultural staff 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 using 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—participating absolutely with the world as we discover it.

• Venice Biennale, till 22 November