The 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale opened on 9 May 2026. The exhibition, which will run through 22 November 2026 across the Giardini, the Arsenale, and various venues throughout Venice, was realized by the curatorial team in accordance with the vision of curator Koyo Kouoh, who passed away in 2025. For the 61st International Art Exhibition, Kouoh invited 110 artists and collectives from numerous geographies and regions, selected with an attention to resonances and affinities rather than potential inconsistencies between practices. Through her inquiry into how their creativity, the breadth of their material experiments, and their visionary ideas simultaneously forge connections with other artists and movements, Kouoh worked toward the idea of a relational geography made possible through a shared spirit.

theoretical framework: in minor keys

Appointed as Artistic Director in November 2024, Koyo Kouoh developed the curatorial project, defined its theoretical framework, selected the artists and works, appointed the catalogue authors, and determined both the graphic identity of the exhibition and the architecture of the exhibition spaces. As stated in Kouoh’s curatorial text, the title she chose for the 61st International Art Exhibition was In Minor Keys. In order to structure the exhibition, motifs and foundations were established upon which it would be built; enchantment, seeding, conviviality, and generative practices inviting collectivities were foregrounded as the organic concepts and concerns that would serve as its carriers. The exhibition took shape through an intensive, multilayered, and deeply shared process, enriched by the collective construction efforts of the curatorial team.

The pages of the publication titled In Minor Keys, which Kouoh prepared and submitted to the Biennale’s administration, offer a striking perspective on curatorial practice and articulate, with crystalline clarity, her vision of exhibition-making. Kouoh presents this concept through the idea of planting seeds. This is an exhibition filled with spirit and with the sacred; it returns the human being, existence itself, to the heart of all things, rediscovering the meaning of being in the world by honoring all earthly elements, regaining a sense of proportion, and once again looking toward the sky. It invites us to see that small things can simultaneously be great things, great enough to serve as the measure of everything. It also offers a series of keys that return us to the earth, to our bodies, and to our senses.

Kouoh predetermined the various concepts guiding the exhibition, motifs distilled from a body of art with a profound effect on spirit and mind. Among these, Shrines surpass any retrospective impulse; ceremonial gatherings are present; so too is enchantment as a counterpoint to skepticism about what art can do; and Shrines represent the spiritual and physical rest opened by artists’ universes, conceived as keys or small islands. Kouoh’s commitment to artist-centered institution building, or Schools, occupies a distinct place in this sequence; here, available energy and resources are directed toward a social purpose. Schools thus emerge as ecosystems rooted in local contexts yet operating on an international scale. Conceived as spaces of encounter, knowledge-sharing, and learning and renewal that remain independent of market forces, the concept of Schools is foregrounded and valued, integrated into the exhibition as a whole.

the international exhibition: a grotesque and carnivalesque dimension

Meanwhile, the procession motif, rendered emphatic through the international exhibition and drawing inspiration from carnival choreographies and Afro-Atlantic encounters, articulates a dynamic spatial language in which joining the crowd is a necessary and implied element rather than a matter of mere observation. Within this carnivalesque dimension, capable of suspending and overturning hierarchies, numerous artistic practices challenge archives and canons, reinterpret established symbols, and demystify dominant narratives through transhistorical, speculative, or rigorous approaches.

Themes such as the plantation, colonial settlement, environmental catastrophe, and geological memory extend to other works that confront seismic events and their traces through radical and liberatory methods. At the same time, gardens and courtyards, conceived as spaces of self-sufficiency born under conditions of constraint, become places of rest, reconnection, and engagement with non-human forms of life, both literally and metaphorically. The exhibition ultimately reflects the possibility of stepping back from the encyclopedic impulse and opening space for rest, contemplation, and deep listening. Sensory installations, alongside performances, invite visitors to slow down and allow themselves to be transformed by experience, encouraging dreaming and enchantment. With its oases evoking studios, courtyards, and spaces of learning, In Minor Keys conveys the freedom of a project spirit that brings together collaboration, generosity, and trust in relation to the multidimensional dimensions of humanity.