{"id":317479,"date":"2026-02-26T02:23:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T02:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/317479\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T02:23:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T02:23:11","slug":"venice-biennale-curatorial-team-reveal-how-they-are-bringing-the-late-koyo-kouohs-vision-to-life-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/317479\/","title":{"rendered":"Venice Biennale curatorial team reveal how they are bringing the late Koyo Kouoh’s vision to life – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

The curatorial vision of Koyo Kouoh, the late artistic director of this year\u2019s Venice Biennale, has been announced at a briefing in the city. The 61st\u00a0International Art Exhibition, titled In Minor Keys, will include 111 artists and artist collectives<\/a>, with many participants coming from the Global South. The 2026 Biennale is scheduled to run from 9 May to 22 November.<\/p>\n

Kouoh, a giant of the contemporary art world who tirelessly championed African artists, was the first woman from the continent to\u00a0be selected to curate the Venice Biennale; she died last May<\/a> in Basel, Switzerland.<\/p>\n

At the briefing, Kouoh\u2019s five-strong curatorial team elaborated on the themes of In Minor Keys,\u00a0which was described as \u201cneither a litany of commentary on world events, nor an escape from compounding or continuously intersecting crises\u201d. Rather, it \u201cproposes a radical connection with art\u2019s natural habitat and role in society\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe artists [selected] are channels to the minor keys,\u201d said one of the team, research assistant Rory Tsapayi. \u201c[They all] stand as a collective score\u2026 artists who work at the boundaries of form. These are artists whose practices seamlessly bleed into society.\u201d Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, another member of the team, said that the the structure is \u201cnot abstractly determined\u2026 it is not organised in sections but in respect to undercurrent priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another curator, Rasha Salti, described how the curatorial structure was devised. \u201cAfter months of meeting online to discuss artists, [Kouoh] convened us in Dakar [at the arts centre she founded, Raw Material Company]. We gathered in April for an intense week of work. She was our conductor\u2026 she composed as we improvised. We noticed that fruit fell [from a mango tree] when the name of an artist was spoken. This happened often enough that when a name was spoken and no fruit fell, we paused, in expectation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The motifs of Kouoh\u2019s show, which will be held in the Arsenale and Central Pavilion in the Giardini, are Shrines, Procession\/Invocation, Schools, Enchantment, Physical and Spiritual Rest, the Threshold and the Creole Garden. Toni Morrison\u2019s novel Beloved\u00a0and Gabriel Garcia-M\u00e1rquez\u2019s One Hundred Years of\u00a0Solitude\u00a0are touchstones for the exhibition also.<\/p>\n

The Shrines\u00a0area will be in the Central Pavilion with tributes to the late Senegalese artist Issa Samb and the late African-American artist Beverly Buchanan. Artists whose work relates to the motif of Procession\/Invocation include Nick Cave, Alvaro Barrington, Daniel Lind-Ramos, Ebony G. Patterson, Johannes Phokela, Tammy Nguyen and Kaloki Nyamai of Kenya. \u201cVisitors are invited to become part of these assemblies,\u201d said another curator, Marie H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Pereira.<\/p>\n

The Schools\u00a0motif will incorporate organisations dedicated to \u201cnetworks that sustain artists\u201d added Pereira. These bodies include the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute, the GAS Foundation in Lagos founded by the artist Yinka Shonibare and Denniston Hill in New York State.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan an exhibition on the scale of the Biennale offer a place to rest your body?\u201d asked Tsapayi, referring to the Creole Garden\u00a0motif. Artists named here include Wangechi Mutu, Otobong Nkanga, Carsten H\u00f6ller and Sandra Knecht.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerformance and innovation\u201d will also be a curatorial strand. A procession of poets will take place in the Giardini, drawing inspiration from Koyo\u2019s Poetry Caravan, a voyage of nine African poets that she curated in 1999. \u201cPoetry was to her the guiding light of curatorial gesture,\u201d said Salti.<\/p>\n

Special mention was also given to the catalogue which will highlight a \u201ccollaborative mode of making\u201d, said editor-in-chief Siddhartha Mitter. Each artist will have a four-page spread with sketches and photographs highlighting studio spaces and artistic processes.<\/p>\n

Born in Douala, Cameroon, Kouoh was the executive director of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town. She gained recognition as a champion of Black artists from Africa and the diaspora. Her death in a hospital in Basel prompted a wave of tributes from across the art world. Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, the president of the Biennale, described her as \u201ca thinker who whispers from another place\u201d and \u201ca drawer of new maps\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The curatorial vision of Koyo Kouoh, the late artistic director of this year\u2019s Venice Biennale, has been announced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60,148043,58077,74010],"class_list":["post-317479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-koyo-kouoh","tag-venice-biennale","tag-venice-biennale-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}