La 61. International Art Exhibition of the Biennale from Venice It was born under two trees. Or rather, it was conceived under a fig tree, and generated under a mango tree. This is how the president of the Biennale, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, explains it (“We met with the curator Koyo Kouoh under a ficus tree in Palazzo Giustinian, home of the Venice Biennale, and under that ficus this alchemy was born”); this is what the curator's collaborators say, recalling the encounters near a mango tree in Dakar (“We heard the thud of a fruit falling and we had the name of a new artist to involve”). These suggestions on the occasion of the presentation of the 2026 Art Biennale. In Minor Keys will be held in Venice, in the usual spaces of the Gardens, the Arsenale and in numerous other locations in the lagoon city, from 9 May to 22 November.
The first Biennale without its curator
An Art Biennale that for the first time she is orphaned by her curator: Koyo Kouoh, Appointed in November 2024, she passed away prematurely in May 2025. “Her” Biennale opens exactly one year later, in line with the curatorial project she had already developed and that her team of collaborators – Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira and Rasha Salti (advisors); Siddhartha Mitter (editor-in-chief); Rory Tsapayi (research assistant) – carried forward, conveying her vision of reality.
The literary influences of Gabriel García Márquez and Toni Morrison
In Minor Keys by Koyo Kouoh It will be an exhibition that will invite us to listen, as the title suggests, to the minor keys, restoring the curator's poetic vision and acting as a bearer of her cultural and human legacy. One hundred and eleven participants – artists, duos, collectives and organizations. Among them, there are no Italians. Rather, they come from different geographical contexts, with works capable, as the curator intended, of engaging both soul and intellect. It will not be divided into sections but rather into what have been defined as "underground priorities." Inspired by literary influences such as the magical realism of One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel García Márquez and the themes related to slavery Beloved by African-American writer Toni Morrison.
A procession of poets pays tribute to the late curator Koyo Kouoh
There will be few physical walls, as the curator would have wanted, to give life to a spatial language inspired by the Processions, to Altars, Schools as places of meeting, learning and creative refuges, witnesses of an art that is also social responsibility. In Space for rest The exhibition will explore the possibility of allowing space for listening and contemplation, in the spirit of slowing down. There will also be a program of performances, including a procession of poets inspired by Poetry Caravan, the journey undertaken by Koyo Kouoh with nine African poets from Dakar to Timbuktu in 1999: they will form a chorus linked to the power of the word. A tribute to Koyo Kouoh, for whom poetry was a guiding principle of curatorial practiceThe time has come to listen to the minor keys: this is his message and that of "his" Biennale.
