The Venice Biennale will move forward with a 2026 version – even after the unexpected death of curator Koyo Kouoh earlier this month.
On Tuesday, the Biennale revealed that it intends to realize Kouoh’s exhibition, which she has begun to design before her death. The exhibition leader said she had begun to select artists, think through their commissions and build programming, and also proposed the central concept of her own exhibition.
Her exhibition will be titled “Little Key” and will still be open on May 9, as originally planned. Kouoh himself chose a team of five consultants: curators Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Helena Pereira and Rasha Salti; Siddartha Mitter, the critics will serve as editor of written materials related to the Kouoh Biennale; and Rory Tsapayi will serve as assistant to the team.
The Biennale’s chief press officer Cristiana Costanzo said in a press conference Tuesday that the choice to choose the show was done with the full support of Kouoh’s family. According to the Biennale, Kouoh accepted her proposal in mid-October and performed in early May.
Kouoh died earlier this month at the age of 57 after a recent cancer diagnosis. She was the Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art in Cape Town, South Africa. Born in Cameroon and raised in Switzerland, she is the second African-born curator to be appointed as the main exhibition of the organizer’s Biennale and one of the few women ever to receive the honor.
Her death seemed to come suddenly, and she is expected to reveal the theme of the biennale within two weeks.
Tuesday’s press conference begins with a short video about a smiling kouoh welcoming everyone to Venice. Once the video was over, the people in the newsroom stood up and applauded.
Salti, one of the curatorial consultants, began the introduction of Kouoh’s concept at the invitation written by Kouoh himself: “Take a deep breath. Exhale. Exhale. Put down your shoulders. Close your eyes.” Kouoh’s text explains that this is comparable to the show itself. Salti read Kouoh’s words, “The Little Key rejects the orchestra’s bombing.”
Koyo Kouoh.
Dave Southwood for Artnews
“The little key requires listening to emotions and maintaining their listening in a rewarding way,” explains another consultant Pereira. “The little key is also a small island with an infinitely rich ecosystem.” Beckhurst Feijoo followed closely, noting that the emphasis will be on “sensory, emotional and subjective.”
In addition, Mitter said: “When rejecting the terrifying wonder, it’s time to listen to the little key, Sotto VOCEto find oasis, islands, the dignity of all living things is considered. “He said that the practice of the artist will “flow seamlessly into society.”
Behind these consultants play slides of images: cave paintings and pictures of city streets, images of small islands surrounded by blue oceans. The consultant also quoted many influential thinkers, including édouard Glissant, a French-born writer and famous for his writings on the concept of opacity; American novelist Toni Morrison, known for his books. beloved;Patrick Chamusso was born in Mozambique and became a hero to many in the battle of apartheid in South Africa. James Baldwin Giovanni’s room.
The Venice Biennale is often considered the greatest art exhibition in the world, with the main exhibitions surveying topics or trends, as well as speeches selected from countries around the world.
The curators of any version of the biennial staged in the last century did not die during the exhibition, but some versions were destroyed by world events. In 1974, an exhibition of “Democratic and Anti-Fascist Culture” was held in place of the main exhibition in protest against Chile’s Pinochet regime, and in 2020, the common pandemic forced the Biennale to push its planned 2021 edition to 2022.
The Biennale presentation comes with Kouoh’s Instagram story.
Biennale President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco insists that the 2026 edition has not been severely damaged. He said: “We are realizing her exhibition today, and as she imagined, she personally gave it to me.
Buttafuoco action tells the moment Kouoh first discovered that she was selected to plan a biennial in 2024. “Can I tell my mother?” she asked him.
“Koyo’s work is talking to us, facing the work of the curator in front of her and the work that will follow her,” Buttafuoco said. To this end, the meeting ended with the words of Tsapayi, the assistant of the curator team, who read Kouoh’s writing in 2022.
“Frankly, I’m tired,” Tsapayi read Kouoh. “People are tired. We are all tired. The world is tired. Even the art itself is tired. Maybe the time is up. We need something else. We need to be kind. We need to laugh. We need to be with beauty and we need a lot. We need to play poetry, we need to be with poetry. We need to love with love again. We need to dance. We need to rest and recover. We need to restore the light. Our time is happy.
While the Kouoh show’s list of artists won’t be announced until next year, some countries have revealed their picks for the National Pavilion at the 2026 Biennale. The National Pavilion is not part of the main exhibition and therefore has nothing to do with Kouoh’s curatorial vision.
