LATIN AMERICAN ARTISTS AT THE BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2026
Fifteen artists from the region will take part in In Minor Keys, the 61st International Art Exhibition opening in Venice in May 2026.
The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys, conceived by Koyo Kouoh, will run from Saturday, May 9 to Sunday, November 22, 2026, across the Giardini, the Arsenale, and various venues throughout Venice. The pre-opening will take place on May 6, 7, and 8, while the awards ceremony and official inauguration will be held on Saturday, May 9, 2026.
Following the premature passing of Koyo Kouoh in May 2025, La Biennale di Venezia decided to carry forward her Exhibition in order to preserve, amplify, and widely disseminate her ideas and the work she pursued with dedication until the very end. Appointed Artistic Director of the Visual Arts Department in November 2024, Kouoh had already fully developed the curatorial project.
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Koyo Kouoh - © Antoine Tempé. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
In Minor Keys is the title chosen by Kouoh for the 61st International Art Exhibition, as stated in the curatorial text she sent to the President of the Biennale on April 8, 2025. The event will be realized with the contribution of the team she selected: Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira and Rasha Salti (advisors); Siddhartha Mitter (editor-in-chief); and Rory Tsapayi (research assistant).
Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, President of La Biennale di Venezia, explained: “The pages of In Minor Keys, which Koyo sent to the Biennale nearly a year ago, offer a powerful insight into her curatorial practice and articulate with crystal clarity her own understanding of what an exhibition should be. Koyo presents this vision through the metaphor of sowing seeds, and it is through her teachings that her team and the Biennale now offer it to the world. It is an exhibition imbued with spirit, with an almost sacred dimension that places the human being back at the center, rediscovering our sense of being in the world by restoring proportion in relation to all earthly elements and by looking to the sky once again.”
He added: “Koyo Kouoh’s journey reappraises human relationships, beginning in one’s immediate surroundings. The small things, which are also great. The human dimension as the measure of all things—something a part of the world, the most opulent and overdeveloped, identified as the ‘West,’ has long lost sight of. From the powerhouse of Africa, and from one of its leading voices, comes a whisper that returns us to authenticity, reminding us that the greatest happiness lies in the use of our own hands—a revelation that reconnects us to the earth, to our bodies and our senses. To a humility before what exceeds us and cannot be explained, only intuited.”
Within this framework, 15 artists will participate representing Latin America: Alvaro Barrington (1983, Venezuela), Carolina Caycedo (1978, Colombia), Annalee Davis (1963, Barbados), Edouard Duval-Carrié (1954, Haiti), Sofía Gallisá Muriente (1986, Puerto Rico), Leonilda González (1923, Uruguay), Ayrson Heráclito (1968, Brazil), Alfredo Jaar (1965, Chile), Natalia Lassalle-Morillo (in collaboration with Gloria Morillo) (1991, Puerto Rico), Daniel Lind-Ramos (1953, Puerto Rico), Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons & Kamaal Malak (1959, Cuba and 1962, U.S.), Guadalupe Maravilla (1976, El Salvador), Manuel Mathieu (1986, Haiti), Eustaquio Neves (1955, Brazil), Guadalupe Rosales (1980, U.S.), Celia Vásquez Yui (1960, Peru), and Gala Porras-Kim (1984, Colombia), who will present a Special Project.
Beyond Latin America, the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia will bring together artists from across Africa, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, North America, and Oceania. In Minor Keys fosters dialogues across geographies and generations, foregrounding diverse practices that engage with memory, spirituality, ecology, and collective experience.
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