In Minor Keys is an invitation to confront the immediate physical, meteorological, and environmental conditions we encounter, to shift into a slower tempo, and to attune ourselves to the frequencies of minor tonalities. For even if they are so often lost in the noise of the chaos that ravages the world, the songs of those who produce beauty in the face of tragic developments, the melodies of those who have escaped the rubble, and the harmonies of those who mend wounds and worlds, continue to sound.

In music, the minor key refers both to the structure of a composition and to its emotional effects. It is so rich an idea that it rapidly exceeds its technical definition and overflows with metaphor. It evokes moods, antiphony, lament, allegory, and whisper. Keeping its distance from ostentation, it comes alive in quiet resonances, low frequencies, murmurs, the consolations of poetry, and the doorways that improvisation opens onto other and otherworldly realms. Minor tonalities call for a listening that moves emotions and sustains them in reciprocity.

Minor tonalities also define small islands and worlds possessing ecosystems of singular and inexhaustible richness, shaping social lives within the framework of political and ecological concerns. An exhibition attuned to minor tonalities is a production that invites us to listen to the enduring signals of the earth and of life, and to connect with the frequencies of the spirit. While in music minor tonalities are generally associated with strangeness, melancholy, and grief, here their joy, consolation, hope, and transcendence also make themselves felt. They carry the rhythms, melodies, and silences of worlds that resonate on the basis of sound and sensation; these worlds come together to form a polyphonic artistic community, gathering and communicating within a joyful collectivity, and making felt the void of alienation and conflict.

mixing languages and expressions that share a common proposition

Biennale Arte 2026 is, in this context, grounded in a deep conviction that artists are vital interpreters of the social and spiritual condition and catalysts for new relationships and possibilities. The compositional structure of the exhibition consists of artistic practices understood as free and informal, encouraging relationships and connections and developing concept and form. The intended effect here is to mix, in the manner of improvisation, the consonance and dissonance of communities that share a common proposition. It is to offer visitors, through relationship, sharing, and transcendence, and across methods, scales, senses, and forms, an experience that is more sensory, more renewing, and more empowering for future work.

The 61st International Art Exhibition, moreover, seeks to render visible the possibilities residing in in-between spaces by encouraging the connecting of all the senses and the wandering from one universe to another within a visual and meditative process. It proposes the forging of radical connections between art’s natural environment and its role in society in response to ongoing crises alongside new developments in the world. In Minor Keys therefore contains exhilarating sequences of journeys that address the emotional dimensions of experience, inviting visitors to meditate, to dream, to take pleasure, to reflect, and to communicate.

In conclusion, it is evident that the dominance of capital and power dismisses indigenous and worldly knowledge as imaginary, and rejects co-produced artistic practices by viewing them as handicrafts designed for decoration or religious ritual. The civilizing projects that have been imposed demolish everything through contempt. It is precisely for this reason that the time has come to refuse the spectacle of horror enacted in this process; to listen to the minor tonalities, to lend a quiet ear to whispers and low frequencies; and to find the oases or islands where the dignity of all living beings is preserved.