Venice Biennale Moves Forward with Koyo Kouoh’s 2026 Exhibition

The Venice Biennale will transfer ahead with its 2026 version—even after the surprising dying of its curator, Koyo Kouoh, earlier this month.

On Tuesday, the Biennale revealed that it meant to comprehend Kouoh’s exhibition, which she had already begun to plot previous to her passing. The exhibition’s leaders mentioned she had already begun deciding on artists, considering by their commissions, and constructing out programming, and that she had additionally give you her present’s central idea.

Her exhibition shall be titled “In Minor Keys,” and it’s nonetheless as a result of open on Might 9, as was initially deliberate. It’s going forward with a workforce of 5 advisers that Kouoh had herself chosen: curators Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Helene Pereira, and Rasha Salti; Siddartha Mitter, a critic who will function the editor of written supplies related to Kouoh’s Biennale; and Rory Tsapayi, who will act as an assistant to the workforce.

At a press convention on Tuesday, Cristiana Costanzo, the Biennale’s lead press officer, mentioned that the selection to comprehend the present was executed “with the complete assist” of Kouoh’s household. In accordance with the Biennale, Kouoh labored on the present between mid-October, when the Biennale accepted her proposal, and early Might.

Kouoh died earlier this month at 57 after a current most cancers analysis. She was previously govt director and chief curator of the Zeitz Museum of Modern Artwork Africa in Cape City, South Africa. Born in Cameroon and raised in Switzerland, she was the second African-born curator to be appointed the organizer the Biennale’s principal exhibition and one of many only a few girls ever to obtain the consideration.

Her passing appeared to have come instantly, occurring lower than two weeks earlier than she was anticipated to disclose her Biennale’s theme.

Tuesday’s press convention started with a short video of a smiling Kouoh welcoming everybody to Venice. These within the press room stood and applauded as soon as the video concluded.

Salti, one of many curatorial advisers, began the presentation of Kouoh’s idea with an invite to decelerate, as written by Kouoh herself: “Take a deep breath. Exhale. Drop your shoulders. And shut your eyes.” This, Kouoh’s textual content defined, befits the present itself. “The minor keys refuse orchestral bombast,” Salti mentioned, studying Kouoh’s phrases.

“The minor keys ask for listening that calls on the feelings and sustains them in return,” Pereira, one other adviser, defined. “The minor keys are additionally small islands with endlessly wealthy ecosystems.” Beckhurst Feijoo adopted, noting that there can be an emphasis on “the sensory, the affective, and the subjective.”

Furthermore, Mitter mentioned, “In refusing the spectacle of horror, it has come time to hearken to the minor keys, to hearken to the sotto voce, to search out the oases, the islands, the place the dignity of all residing beings is regarded.” He mentioned there can be a deal with artists whose practices “seamlessly bleed into society.”

Behind these advisers performed a slideshow of photographs: photos of cave work and metropolis streets, photographs of tiny isles surrounded by blue oceans. The advisers additionally quoted from a litany of influential thinkers, together with Édouard Glissant, a author born in Martinique, based mostly in France, and recognized for his writings on ideas equivalent to opacity; the American novelist Toni Morrison, recognized for books equivalent to Beloved; Patrick Chamusso, who was born in Mozambique and have become a hero to many throughout the struggle towards Apartheid in South Africa; and James Baldwin, an American poet and novelist recognized for books equivalent to Giovanni’s Room.

The Venice Biennale is usually thought-about the world’s best artwork exhibition, with a principal exhibition surveying a theme or an inclination going down alongside displays chosen by nations from throughout the globe.

No curator of any Biennale version staged previously century has died throughout the making of their exhibition, however there have been editions that have been disrupted by world occasions. In 1974, a present for “democratic and anti-fascist tradition” was held instead of principal exhibition as a protest towards the Pinochet regime in Chile, and in 2020, the Covid pandemic pressured the Biennale to push its deliberate 2021 version to 2022.

Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, the Biennale’s president, insisted that the 2026 version was not severely disrupted, nonetheless. “We’re realizing right this moment her exhibition as she designed it, as she imagined it, as she gave it to me personally,” he mentioned, including, “La Biennale is doing right this moment what it has been doing for 100 years.”

Buttafuoco movingly recounted the second when Kouoh first discovered that she had been chosen to curate the Biennale in 2024. “Might I inform this to my mom?” she requested him.

“Koyo’s work is talking to us, going through the work of curators earlier than her and those that can come after her,” mentioned Buttafuoco. To that finish, the convention closed out with phrases from Tsapayi, the curatorial workforce’s assistant, who learn an editorial penned by Kouoh in 2022.

“And fairly frankly, I’m drained,” mentioned Tsapayi, studying Kouoh’s phrases. “Persons are drained. We’re all drained. The world is drained. Even artwork itself is drained. Maybe the time has come. We want one thing else. We have to heal. We have to snicker. We should be with magnificence, and many it. We have to play, we should be with poetry. We should be with love once more. We have to dance. We have to relaxation and restore. We have to breathe. We want the radicality of pleasure. The time has come.”

Although an artist checklist for Kouoh’s present won’t be introduced till subsequent yr, some nations have already revealed their picks for his or her nationwide pavilions on the 2026 Biennale. The nationwide pavilions are usually not a part of the principle exhibition and subsequently are usually not associated to Kouoh’s curatorial imaginative and prescient.