The possibility that the semantic range of In Minor Keys, designated as the central theme of Biennale Arte 2026, might undergo a linguistic transformation foregrounding individuality and local connections, and thereby become capable of expressing itself with a synthesizing spirit, confronts us with a phenomenon shaped by new psychogeographic inquiries. The conceptual coherence that Koyo Kouoh consciously establishes through the lens of female and Black identity, alongside shared registers of language and meaning, lends the constructed intellectual framework a new aesthetic dimension and generates a fresh current of energy.

We find ourselves at a juncture where artistic practices, particularly those that have come to the fore in recent years as forms of political action and production, are positioned as the sensitive outcomes of consistent experiences and relational efforts that have crystallized into a form of collective resistance. This is evident in the many instances where artistic practices grounded in states of vulnerability and precarity are woven into the narratives of production as acts of sensory engagement and as stimuli of memory within the emerging conceptual map of Biennale Arte 2026.

branching minor phantasms

It is genuinely remarkable that a Black diasporic energy should constitute the biennale’s spirit, one that resonates across every space of the Arsenale, and that it should produce the coherence of a profound collective installation conceived as a field of experience. Equally noteworthy, within this same context, is the way in which singular yet intimate spaces, structured within an entirely complex order and contaminating one another, are transformed into what might be called “representations of distilled thought.” Here, the local markers of belonging, composed predominantly of woven and textile works as products of labor and kept alive through cultural connection, visibly reflect a resistance that has been symbolically elevated in the name of visibility. Such primordial things, which carry the secret of the exhibited works, their bond with truth, their authenticity, and their causality, become fragments of a depth concerned with the representation of belonging. In this context, Koyo Kouoh has, it seems, orchestrated a metaphysical sublimation by departing from the presence and sanctity of a Black energy, and has evidently taken care to allow the psychotic qualities latent within the works to surface through this process. In this way, within a field of struggle engaged with minor things, a potential distribution of intensity is achieved through concept-images that have become autonomous and enter into collision, and the protestatory and nihilistic character of a tendency toward togetherness is brought compellingly into view. The minor phantasms that reverberate through the Arsenale thus branch and proliferate within themselves, projecting outward the erased or lost images that have been pushed into the depths. In this process, the presence and diversity of imaginative possibilities concerning how depressive images, which attach themselves to a shared unconscious and are transformed into objects of representation, might cling to a chain of originary memory, is of particular importance.

Koyo Kouoh’s capacity for empathy precedes, at its core, a collective adhesion that clarifies the positions of the paradoxical and libidinal deviation reached in the details. In this respect, it is inevitable that In Minor Keys should become a dense accumulation of multiple images, assuming the guise of an object-representation that deepens from within while at times becoming estranged from its own domain. At precisely this point, the constitutive elements of the art object are perhaps obliged to contaminate or adhere to an ambiguous signifier through the meaning-components they generate. It is therefore not at all surprising that certain object-representations within the biennale, those that exceed Kouoh’s conceptual registers, should devolve into a brutally labor-intensive form in which only surfaces are patterned.

a critical and ironic imaginary

It is worth noting, moreover, that in the production of art as a form of political action, dramatic dance and processional performances enriched by spiritual impetus reveal the emotional and introverted dimensions of this field of experience, one that is collectively constituted and rapidly drawn toward a speculative expressivity. A space has thus been created here in which socio-cultural and provocative ethical values are enacted in accordance with Kouoh’s critical and ironic imaginary, in which differing modes of thought that interrogate prevailing strategies of representation are given visual form, and in which a great deal shaped by the pursuit of a transforming imagination is shared.

In this post-traumatic environment, where debates on identity and belonging are inflamed by what is expressed and signified, the emphasis placed on vulnerability and precarious times is of particular significance. The fact that a general emotionality, born of hesitant and tense living, at times evolves into new narrative forms through the presence of a layered diasporic fragility, is plainly apparent in this context.

As Koyo Kouoh problematizes the invisible dimensions of this traumatic process that remain submerged, she integrates fragmented linguistic elements and creates space for the characteristic emphases of artists, drawing them into the field of action and bringing the repressed to light. Furthermore, by anticipating such complex installative practices, she sets into motion the destructive interiorities lodged deep within, while making visible, in an almost enchanting manner, her declarations concerning the power of a diasporic energy that represents times of hardship.