{"id":478204,"date":"2026-05-10T20:10:45","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T20:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/478204\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T20:10:45","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T20:10:45","slug":"in-minor-keys-how-venices-international-exhibition-was-brought-to-life-after-the-death-of-artistic-director-koyo-kouoh-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/478204\/","title":{"rendered":"In Minor Keys: how Venice’s international exhibition was brought to life after the death of artistic director Koyo Kouoh – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everything about the international exhibition for the 61st Venice Biennale feels anomalous. When the tragic death of its artistic director, Koyo Kouoh, was announced in May 2025, it sent a shockwave through the art world. Inevitably, there were questions about if\u2014and, as importantly, how\u2014her vision for the Biennale could be realised.<\/p>\n

In the months since, those questions have been answered. The title of the exhibition and a text written by Kouoh were published soon after her death, immediately reflecting how advanced the fundamental themes of the Biennale were. And her long-established collaborative practice proved crucial. We now know that a group of five of Kouoh\u2019s collaborators, which for the purpose of the Biennale has been named \u201cla squadra di Koyo Kouoh\u201d\u2014Koyo Kouoh\u2019s team\u2014had been working with her for several months before she died and met with her in Dakar, Senegal, a little more than a month before her death to finalise its themes and scenography, refine the artist list and chosen works, and even go so far as to establish the exhibition\u2019s graphic identity.<\/p>\n

At the press conference in February, they announced the full concept, with a list of 111 invited individual artists, duos and collectives, and\u2014a key factor\u2014artist-led organisations. Each of the five members of La squadra spoke, emphasising their collective role in realising Kouoh\u2019s vision, rather than presenting themselves as replacements. Significantly, they did not take questions and none was put forward as a spokesperson. The message was clear: this is Koyo Kouoh\u2019s exhibition. And while, for the first time in a number of years, The Art Newspaper cannot feature an interview about the international exhibition on these pages, we can still take a deep dive into its themes, its organisation and its protagonists.<\/p>\n

In Minor Keys, in Koyo Kouoh\u2019s own words<\/p>\n

It is striking, and deeply pertinent to the overarching themes, format and pacing of the exhibition, that Kouoh begins her text on it, delivered to the Biennale on 8 April 2025 but published posthumously, with an incantation of the kind that might begin a meditation:<\/p>\n

[Take a deep breath]<\/p>\n

[Exhale]<\/p>\n

[Drop your shoulders]<\/p>\n

[Close your eyes]<\/p>\n

This is an exhibition that asks us to pause, to slow down, even\u2014quite explicitly\u2014to rest. Venice Biennale shows, however effective and stimulating they may be, are also always simultaneously draining\u2014an inevitable descent into footsoreness and brain fog. Kouoh states that she wants the exhibition to be \u201crenewing rather than exhausting\u201d, and wants us to \u201cshift to a slower gear and tune in to the frequencies of the minor keys\u201d.<\/p>\n

She explains that the musical concept evokes both form and content: a structure and a mood. And, she writes, it \u201cspills with metaphor\u201d. One potent example is of music evoking all the cultural production that will feature in the show, and for the kinds of places and communities in which it is made. She does not propose an escape from what she calls \u201cthe anxious cacophony of the present chaos raging through the world\u201d; rather, she attempts to offer a counterbalance. Despite geopolitical strife and the historic conditions that continue to influence it, Kouoh suggests, \u201cthe music continues. The songs of those producing beauty in spite of tragedy, the tunes of the fugitives recovering from the ruins, the harmonies of those repairing wounds and worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Resistance and survival<\/p>\n

For Kouoh, minor keys are a form of resistance and survival; they \u201crefuse orchestral bombast and goose-step military marches\u201d in favour of, among much else, \u201cthe lament\u2026 the whisper\u2026 the lower frequencies\u2026the hums\u201d. This seems set to be an exhibition of nuance and subtlety. But while she acknowledges that minor keys are often associated with melancholy and sorrow, she says that, in her show, \u201ctheir joy, solace, hope and transcendence manifest as well\u201d.<\/p>\n

This upbeat element will likely be visible in the sense of community and interrelation that Kouoh was keen to foster. She writes about her inclusion of artistic practices that \u201cprompt relation and relationship, that advance concept and form through networks and schools\u2014understood freely and informally\u201d. In one of the most explicit musical references, she states that she intends the effect to be one that \u201cscrambles cohesion and dissonance in the manner of a free-jazz ensemble, or perhaps, at the scale of the Biennale Arte, a festival of ensembles with a common premise: that poetics liberate and people make beauty together\u201d.<\/p>\n

This was evident in the images La squadra showed at the conference: clear visual and thematic associations between the work of diverse artists across widespread geographies. While the intellectual structure is rigorous, she wanted the experience of the exhibition to be \u201cmore sensory than didactic\u201d. Artists, as \u201cchannels to and between the minor keys\u201d, will be left to speak for themselves, rather than crowbarred into a conceptual framework: \u201clistening to, rather than speaking for them is at the core of the curatorial conceit\u201d.<\/p>\n

Off the treadmill<\/p>\n

Again, though, the journeys she hopes to send us on are not presented as escapist balm. Kouoh notes that she wants visitors \u201cto marvel, meditate, dream, revel, reflect and commune in realms where time is not corporate property nor at the mercy of relentlessly accelerated productivity\u201d. She invites us, in other words, to step off the capitalist treadmill.<\/p>\n

And if there is a singular political message of the show, it is this: art and cultural production are a form of resistance, a refusal of what Kouoh calls \u201cthe spectacle of horror\u201d\u2014the \u201cheadstrong pursuit of growth supported by ruthlessness and greed\u201d embodied in \u201cthe enduring time of capital and empire\u201d, with its destruction of communities (with their attendant culture and knowledge) and ecologies.<\/p>\n

She suggests it is time \u201cto find the oases, the islands, where the dignity of all living beings is safeguarded\u201d. She thus invokes another meaning of minor keys: a geographical one. A minor cay (pronounced \u201ckey\u201d) is a small island. This is both a reference to the diverse voices in the show\u2014artists from \u201cminor keys\u201d across the globe feature\u2014and also another metaphor. The small islands are \u201cworlds amid oceans with distinct and endlessly rich ecosystems\u201d that are embodied in \u201cthe other worlds that artists make, the intimate and convivial universes that refresh and sustain even in terrible times\u201d. Kouoh\u2019s exhibition\u2014a \u201ccollective score composed together with artists who have built universes of imagination\u201d\u2014aims to be a resonant and sonorous experience.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

From left: Rasha Salti, Siddhartha Mitter, Marie H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Pereira, Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo and Rory Tsapayi have realised Kouoh\u2019s plans for the Biennale<\/p>\n

Photo by Andrea Avezzu<\/p>\n

La squadra di Koyo Kouoh<\/p>\n

The group of five specialists who will realise Kouoh\u2019s show consists of three \u201cadvisers\u201d\u2014Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Pereira and Rasha Salti\u2014an editor-in-chief, Siddhartha Mitter, and Rory Tsapayi, research assistant. Beckhurst Feijoo, who is based in London, worked with both Kouoh and Salti on the 8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg in 2022. Salti also worked with Kouoh on the research project Saving Bruce Lee: African and Arab Cinema in the Era of Soviet Cultural Diplomacy, which had manifestations at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. Pereira is a senior curator at that Berlin institution and was the director of programmes at Raw Material Company, the Dakar nonprofit founded by Kouoh, where she remains an adviser. Mitter, whose background is in criticism, collaborated with Kouoh on a research residency for the US-French organisation, Villa Albertine. Tsapayi, meanwhile, worked with Kouoh during her directorship of Zeitz Mocaa in Cape Town, South Africa.<\/p>\n

The crucial moment in the collaboration took place in Dakar, at Raw Material Company, in April 2025, when the team met for a week of work with Kouoh in person after months of online meetings. This meeting was evoked powerfully and enchantingly in a text written by the team and read by Salti at the press conference: she described the setting, beneath a straw roof, with their conversations punctuated by the sound of falling mangoes from a nearby tree. Salti recalled the gathering as being like \u201ca rehearsal for a musical performance: [Kouoh] was our conductor, and while each of us arrived with a finely tuned instrument, it took those few days for us to tune to one another. She composed as we improvised.\u201d And while no exact details were given, Salti described how on the final day of the convention, Kouoh \u201cassigned missions to each of us\u201d. Those roles might become clearer when the exhibition opens.<\/p>\n

Since then, the team has brought the vision to practical fruition, with regular online meetings and in-person convenings in Venice in May and October 2025, and in Dakar in June 2025. Alongside her team, Kouoh appointed the Cape Town practice Wolff Architects as exhibition designers, and the intelligence of their scenography, according to the curators, lies in \u201cits generosity to each artist\u2019s universe and to the sensorial experience that can open up between constellations of practices\u201d. Indigo banners from floor to ceiling will appear at key moments in the show, \u201ccalming the senses at the d\u00e9nouement of one phase and signalling the opening of another\u201d, Kouoh\u2019s team say.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Biennale will run from Saturday 9 May to Sunday 22 November<\/p>\n

Photo by Francesco Galli<\/p>\n

\u2018Undercurrent priorities\u2019<\/p>\n

The exhibition will be structured according not to clear sections, but what the curatorial team call \u201cundercurrent priorities\u201d\u2014strands that will \u201cleap from practice to practice, snaking an intergenerational path to build across the sites of In Minor Keys\u201d. The first is Shrines. If visitors begin with the former Italian pavilion in the Giardini before continuing their journey at the Arsenale, they will encounter in the opening space\u2014the Sala Chini with its ceiling murals\u2014environments created by two artists whom Kouoh saw as the \u201clodestars\u201d for her exhibition: the Senegalese multimedia artist and organiser, Issa Samb, a mentor for Kouoh, and the US sculptor and installation artist Beverly Buchanan.<\/p>\n

The next strand is Processional Assemblies, particularly focusing on gatherings in African Atlantic communities. Think carnivals and other exuberant expressions\u2014for instance, in the work of the US artist Nick Cave and the London-based Alvaro Barrington, but in spiritual and mourning rituals, too. Procession and gathering also appears to be a guiding principle; we learn that Kouoh wanted it to be open\u2014\u201cto refuse solid walls where possible\u201d, as the curators put it\u2014so that visitors are \u201cinvited to become part of this assembly\u201d. The exhibition expands on the carnivalesque theme, identifying in it a capacity for subverting systems and structures of power, particularly in relation to histories and thus archives. Among the artists the curators cite here are the Ghanaian British painter and collagist Godfried Donkor and Yoshiko Shimada, the feminist artist who has explored violence and the role of women in Japanese imperialist histories.<\/p>\n

Enchantment is perhaps the most optimistic strand, in that it addresses the transformative effect of making \u201cin the face of cynicism about what art can do\u201d. Here, among other things, we will encounter works that respond to daily life and find unexpected moments of poetry within them\u2014for instance, in the playful and quietly touching installations of the US artist Rose Salane, which find humanity in the quirky subversion of urban systems, and Billie Zangewa\u2019s beautiful silk fragments of quotidian life.<\/p>\n

Island universes<\/p>\n

The geographical keys, those \u201csmall islands of artists\u2019 universes\u201d, are represented in part by Oases, sites for spiritual and physical rest and repose. They are informed by various concepts, including the \u201ccreole garden\u201d, as termed by the Martiniquan poet \u00c9douard Glissant\u2014biodiverse spaces cultivated by enslaved people in the Caribbean and Americas as acts of defiance and sustenance. Works relating to this theme are presented by, among others, Wangechi Mutu, who creates works in sculpture, painting and other media in which the speculative and social are brought into exquisite tension, and the artist Mar\u00eda Magdalena Campos-Pons and musician Kamaal Malak, whose collaborative installations both enchant and unsettle in their exploration of colonial and ecological histories. Dedicated rest spaces featuring the work of other artists will also appear at various points. These are moments that, according to La squadra, \u201cinvite reverie, solemnity, devotion, and wonder\u201d, by artists as diverse as Mohammed Z. Rahman, a painter of marvellously lyrical scenes that quietly evoke sociopolitical histories, and the great US sonic and performance artist, Laurie Anderson. Other oases include an evocation of Samb\u2019s courtyard in Dakar and a response to Marcel Duchamp\u2019s New York studio, where he secretly made his last work, \u00c9tant Donn\u00e9s (1946-66).<\/p>\n

Lastly, seven artist-centred institutions, or Schools, punctuate the exhibition. Though not technically academic institutions, these artist-run initiatives are centres of profound learning, spaces for gathering and making, for discussion and communion. Inevitably, they include Raw Material Company, but also Denniston Hill, the institution founded by Julie Mehretu, Paul Pfeiffer and Lawrence Chua in the Catskills, New York State, and GAS Foundation, the institution founded by Yinka Shonibare in Nigeria.<\/p>\n

Literary influences<\/p>\n

Poetry, according to Kouoh\u2019s team, \u201cwas to her the guiding light of a curatorial gesture\u201d. And literature looms large in this Biennale. Other shows have chosen a more theoretical umbrella under which to organise the artists but, for Kouoh, it is poetry and the novel that guide her thesis. Quotes by James Baldwin, Glissant and others rhythmically appear in her exhibition text, but two masterworks of literature are touchstones: Toni Morrison\u2019s Beloved (1987) and Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez\u2019s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). As the curators put it, the two books are connected \u201cin their evocation of thresholds between lifeworlds and temporalities\u201d. They both grapple with vast themes\u2014respectively, the legacies of slavery and a modern history of Colombia\u2014via the realms of a haunting imagination. To emphasise the importance of poetry, one of a series of performances programmed for the Biennale will connect profoundly to Kouoh\u2019s personal history. \u201cA procession of poets\u201d will appear in the Giardini, a direct response to an early moment of inspiration for her: the Poetry Caravan, a journey she made from Dakar to Timbuktu in 1999 with nine African poets. If one element of the Biennale acts as a memorial for its curator, surely this is it.<\/p>\n

Major artists in minor keys<\/p>\n

Rather than being divided into discrete sections, the Biennale is organised around what the curatorial team call \u201cundercurrent priorities\u201d or strands that \u201cleap from practice to practice\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Issa Samb<\/p>\n

Photo by Sophie Thun, courtesy of RAW Material Company<\/p>\n

Issa Samb<\/p>\n

One of the two \u201clodestar\u201d artists, Samb was a pivotal figure for Koyo Kouoh. Their collaboration began in 2010 and Kouoh went on to curate a number of projects exploring his singular activities, from the radical artist collective Laboratoire Agit\u2019Art, which he co-founded in Dakar in the early 1970s, to more individual activities. His courtyard in Dakar, recreated in part for the Biennale, was his studio, but also a centre for community and cultural activities, and a Gesamtkunstwerk. A marker of his influence on Kouoh can be found in her 2017 description of him as \u201can enabler of creative processes, a mediator of artistic energy and of exhibition practice\u201d. She could have been describing herself.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Buchanan\u2019s Shack (1989) was inspired by improvised buildings in Georgia<\/p>\n

Courtesy of the Estate of Beverly Buchanan and Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York<\/p>\n

Beverly Buchanan<\/p>\n

Kouoh discovered her other lodestar artist much later than Samb, but was profoundly moved by her sculpture and public art practice. Buchanan began her artistic career as a painter in the 1960s but made sculptures from the 1970s onwards, including a group of stone works that deliberately evoked ruins. She is best known for her drawings and sculptures known as shacks, inspired by the improvised vernacular architecture in the southern US, and particularly in Georgia, where she was based. Accompanying texts reflected the fact that, for Buchanan, the shacks were as much portraits of people as representations of buildings.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Embrace of Traces (2026) by Kader Attia; the artist will feature at a \u201crest space\u201d<\/p>\n

Courtesy the artist<\/p>\n

Kader Attia<\/p>\n

Kader Attia provides one of the \u201crest spaces\u201d that\u00a0offer a pause for mental and physical repose throughout the show. Attia\u2019s practice is enormously diverse in form\u2014he began as a photographer three decades ago, and has since expanded his language into sculpture, collage and installation\u2014but it has an unerringly consistent theme: repair. Two recent sculptural installations, Resonance and Pluvialit\u00e9 (both 2025), seem likely candidates to be shown in the Biennale, in being installations that foreground sound, respectively in\u00a0the form of birdcages containing bells and animated rainsticks.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Aya (2024) by Torkwase Dyson; the artist is a proponent of \u201cBlack Compositional Thought\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Torkwase Dyson, photo by Evan Jenkins, courtesy Gray Chicago\/New York<\/p>\n

Torkwase Dyson<\/p>\n

Though Dyson\u2019s vast, often monochrome installations, sculptures and paintings might initially appear abstract\u2014even minimalist\u2014they deal with maximal subjects, including what she describes as \u201cthe ways Black and brown bodies perceive and negotiate space as information\u201d. The ongoing concept at the core of her work is Black Compositional Thought, which takes human-made structures and geographies, including architecture, waterways and forms of cartography, explores their history of oppression, and suggests how they might be inhabited by Black bodies and reimagined as places of liberation. Examples of this are her \u201chypershapes\u201d: geometric forms that relate to specific 19th-century figures who escaped enslavement. Dyson is gathered among the artists who respond to the legacies of historic violence and environmental destruction.<\/p>\n

Billie Zangewa<\/p>\n

Included among the artists whose work relates to the strand of enchantment, Billie Zangewa\u2019s hand-stitched raw-silk works poetically tell fragments of her life story. Unconventional in shape, they seek to document aspects of women\u2019s\u2014and especially Black women\u2019s\u2014lives that are often ignored or underrepresented in art\u2014a process that she describes as \u201cdaily feminism\u201d. Though they might illustrate domestic labour and other apparently mundane subject matter, Zangewa sees these textiles as political acts, in addressing gender and racial stereotypes, and as representations of humdrum pleasures. Her use of sewing and silk embodies her themes: it is a conscious engagement\u00a0with the gendered associations of art or\u00a0craft materials.<\/p>\n

Alfredo Jaar<\/p>\n

Like Dyson, Jaar is identified by the curators as one of the artists who use radical approaches to grapple with \u201cseismic events that refuse to settle or go quietly\u201d. From his early work Public Interventions (Studies on Happiness), begun in 1979\u2014billboards in Chilean public spaces while the country was under the dictatorship of General Pinochet, asking: \u201cAre you happy?\u201d\u2014Jaar has unflinchingly addressed state-sponsored violence and social injustice, and how these issues are reported on by the international media. A veteran of multiple Venice Biennales, from 1986 to 2013, Jaar\u2019s works have addressed, among much else, the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s, and\u00a0Chairman Mao\u2019s detainment and murder of Chinese intellectuals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everything about the international exhibition for the 61st Venice Biennale feels anomalous. When the tragic death of its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[209434,365,362,363,364,366,18,117,19,17,209433,166752,209432,95735],"class_list":{"0":"post-478204","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-alfredo-jaar","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-kader-attia","19":"tag-koyo-kouoh","20":"tag-torkwase-dyson","21":"tag-venice-biennale-2026"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116552101407017259","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}