Punctually, as with every edition, the Global Campus of Human Rights Press Office is invited and will participate in the preview days of the opening of the Biennale Arte and its collateral events.
After the premature passing of Koyo Kouoh in May 2025, with the full support of her family, La Biennale di Venezia decided to carry out her Exhibition, with the purpose of preserving, enhancing and widely disseminating her ideas and the work she pursued with such dedication to the very end. Koyo Kouoh, nominated as the Artistic Director of the Visual Arts Department in November 2024, already developed the curatorial project, defining its theoretical framework, selecting the artists and the artworks, designating the authors of the catalogue, determining the graphic identity of the Exhibition and the architecture of the exhibition spaces, and establishing a dialogue with the artists invited to participate.
In Minor Keys is the title chosen by Koyo Kouoh for the 61st International Art Exhibition, as specified in the curatorial text, which was sent to the President of La Biennale on 8 April 2025. The Exhibition will be realised with the contribution of the team selected by Koyo: Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira and Rasha Salti (advisors); Siddhartha Mitter (editor-in-chief); and Rory Tsapayi (research assistant).
During the presentation in Venice, at Ca’ Giustinian, headquarters of the La Biennale di Venezia, they were the ones who outlined the work carried out together with Koyo for the 61st International Art Exhibition. This work culminated in a significant meeting held in Dakar in April 2025 at RAW Material Company — the cultural center founded by Kouoh — and led by the Curator herself. That experience remains emblematic of the way she conceived curatorial practice: grounded in relationships and open to the unexpected.
“The joy of authentic art, which so faithfully resembles real life” – the President of La Biennale di Venezia Pietrangelo Buttafuoco commented. “The pages of In Minor Keys, which Koyo sent to La Biennale almost a year ago, offer a striking insight into her curatorial practice and spell out a crystal-clear notion of her own concept of an exhibition. Koyo presents us with this concept through the very idea of sowing seeds, and it is through her teachings that her team and La Biennale di Venezia now offer it to the world. It is an exhibition permeated with spirit, with a sacredness that puts the person, the human being, back at the heart of things, rediscovering the sense of being in the world by reacquiring a sense of proportion with respect to all earthly elements, and by looking to the sky once more. Koyo Kouoh’s journey is one that reappraises human relationships, starting from people’s own backyards. The little things, which are also great ones. The human dimension, the benchmark of everything, which a part of the world, yet one the most opulent and overdeveloped world – identified in the name ‘West’ – has long since lost sight of, misplaced. Thus, from the powerhouse of Africa, and from one of its leading voices, comes a whisper that leads us back to authenticity, acknowledging that the greatest happiness lies in the use of our own hands – a revelation that brings us back to the Earth, to our bodies and our senses. To a humility towards what is greater than us and what cannot be explained but merely intuited”.
The 61st International Art Exhibition – In Minor Keys by Koyo Kouoh – organised by La Biennale di Venezia, will be accompanied by 100 National Participations and 31 Collateral Events. Participating for the first time: the Republic of Guinea, the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, the Republic of Nauru, Qatar, the Republic of Sierra Leone, Federal Republic of Somalia, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and El Salvador.
La Biennale di Venezia has decided that the Awards Ceremony of the 61st International Art Exhibition will take place at the end on Sunday 22 November, the last day open to the public, as occurred in the past in other exceptional circumstances (the 2021 edition of the International Architecture Exhibition, due to Covid). La Biennale di Venezia has therefore decided to establish for the 61st International Art Exhibition two Visitors’ Lions to be awarded:
- to the Best Participant in the 61st Exhibition In Minor Keys by Koyo Kouoh
- to the Best National Participation in the 61st Exhibition
Visitors eligible to vote for the Visitors’ Lions are ticket holders who have visited both Exhibition venues during the opening period of the 61st Exhibition, from May 9 to November 22. Visits to both venues will be verified through the ticketing system’s tracking. Each ticket holder may cast one vote for each of the two awards, in one single session. Artist collectives will be identified as single participants, according to the list of participants in the Exhibition In Minor Keys.
There are 110 invited participants of this exhibition – among them, individual artists, collaborative duos, collectives, and artist-led organisations – hail from many geographies and regions selected by Koyo Kouoh with particular attention to resonances, affinity, and and possible convergences between practices, even when far apart. In looking to artists working in Salvador, Dakar, San Juan, Beirut, Paris, or Nashville, for example, Koyo sought to envision how their ingenuity, breadth of material experimentation, and visionary ideas bear connections to other artists and movements in simultaneity. In this spirit, In Minor Keys expands upon Koyo’s relational geography of encounters with artists over her lifetime.
For more information, please visit: Biennale Arte 2026 | Homepage 2026