Kouoh was unable to see her exhibition. She passed away last year, and this Biennale arrived in the lagoon like an orphan carried forward by her curatorial family, who have preserved her dedication and artistic trajectory. Her absence is felt—in some places, the score remains a sequence of solos in which the lack of an orchestra conductor is noticeable. But it’s also clear that those who carried on her work did so with care.
What makes this Biennale interesting is undoubtedly the way in which the global context has forcefully made its way into its mechanisms, and the response—both from the curator and the jury—has been radical: a mass resignation of jury members, an upheaval in the system for awarding the Lions, protests, widespread “free-for-alls,” and a more or less latent sense of self-management that, remarkably, led many national pavilions to embrace the theme of the Central Exhibition, creating an unexpected sense of unity.
It’s about coming together, supporting one another, exploring and bringing to light what is often overlooked in everyday life—without any pretense of creating something complete, finished, or ready to be hailed or torn apart by critics. It’s a special space for listening, where we can tune into the deepest frequencies—and thus the ones that are hardest to hear.
Because “In Minor Keys” is a biennial that isn’t just meant to be viewed, but to be explored. You go to the library, you actually sit down—and the exhibition layout makes this possible: there are far more seats than in previous years, the sound-absorbing cardboard dampens the noise, and the humble materials help you slow down. An exhibition that adopts a subdued tone even in its design, and that asks for time to engage with the works just as one would enter an archive.
It’s also an overwhelming exhibition. So many artists, so many works, and a sense of overload that can be dizzying at times. But that’s exactly why it’s worth exploring it with a map: so you don’t get overwhelmed, and so you can choose where to stop.
For this guide, we’ve also identified ten threads—ten points of entry—that cut across pavilions and practices. These are our keys to deciphering Kouoh’s clues. They aren’t mutually exclusive: they intertwine, refer to one another, and sometimes contradict each other. But they serve as a tool for those who are very curious but short on time.
In the photo
Koyo Kouoh, Photo courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
Giardini Biennale Entrance
Arsenal
The Arsenale opens by turning its back on visitors while simultaneously inviting them in. You enter a circular structure through a narrow opening, as if stepping into a room where someone is already praying—and find yourself immersed in Khaled Sabsabi’s environmental paintings.
Khalil is a journey that is both complete and layered: from Lebanon to Australia in 1976, through war, displacement, and loss. The title means “close friend,” and the work does exactly that—it welcomes but demands respect; it embraces but calls for silence. Painting, video, scents, sounds: Sabsabi’s Sufi practice enters the exhibition like a threshold that, if crossed calmly, offers contemplation and reflection. You enter, you listen, you stay.
For those who wish to immerse themselves even more deeply and contemplatively in these sensations, a visit to the Australia Pavilion is all it takes, where Khalef Sabsabi presents a second immersive environment complemented by wall inscriptions that echo a poetic text that inspired the work.
Often, there are no archives of the lesser voices—destroyed, lost, or simply never having existed. Because archives are instruments of power, and few civilizations have been allowed to create and maintain one.
Where archives are lacking, however, imagination steps in. Several works explore precisely what happens when time layers itself over present-day phenomena. Human remains displayed as tourist attractions, as seen in Florence Lazar’s video filmed in a slave cemetery where the remains are “legally” classified as movable property by the French government. Or burned-out libraries, as depicted in Berni Searle’s videos shot after the fire that destroyed Cape Town’s largest collection of African films.
In the minor keys, according to this interpretation, it is possible to bring together different temporal perspectives—to sense the future and the past as they cut through the absurdities of the present. Pauline Oliveros’s space is unique and not to be missed. The Deep Listening she founded—a meditative and sonic practice that has shaped an entire generation of sound artists—finally takes center stage here, as it deserves. You walk in, sit down, and listen. How wonderful.
In the photo
Khaled Sabsabi
Australia Pavilion, Khalef Sabsabi
Carrie Schneider offers one of the most ambitious reflections in the exhibition. Her gargantuan, almost inaccessible process reflects on sexist depictions in the history of cinema—but in reality demonstrates just how impossible it is to restore to a tangible state that which has now become immaterial. Except through gigantic, complex processes that are open to failure. And perhaps it is precisely within the realm of failure, Schneider suggests, that it makes sense to try to bring the virtual back into the body.
Kaloki Nyamai’s works are enormous and beautiful. Beyond their abstract, suspended forms, they are moments captured in the transition from one instance of state abuse to another. It is worth focusing on the stitches, which the artist experiences as a means of repair but also as a space in their own right—where contradictions, beauty, and brutality, memory and oblivion are held together.
It may be true that God is dead, but the gods of subjugated, marginalized, or simply bygone cultures live on in numerous works that offer spaces for inspiration, reflection, or even healing and prayer.
Such is the work of Tabita Rezaire:“Omo Elu”and “Mother Trinity” are tapestries dyed with indigo—a plant used in colonial trade, processed through the exploitative labor of slavery, and now cultivated by Rezaire on that very same land. At the center of the circle dedicated to the goddess Yemaya is a Palestinian flag made of seashells. Rezaire’s artistic practice is not a devotion to motherhood as an abstract concept: it is a practice of maternal connection to the planet itself.
Ayrson Heráclito, through his sculptures made of joined and welded steel, reflects on a gesture—that of joining, specifically—which recurs in many practices involving recycled materials. What the world discards is inexplicably collected by artistə, preserved, and then used for works that one can only imagine once they have been created.
The sense of smell runs through the exhibition like an undercurrent. Several works use natural scents and odors to transport viewers to different places and contexts.
Nicholas Hlobo, with his creature-like sculptures; Dan Lie’s garlands; and Kader Attia, with his dried lemons suspended from the ceiling—all work with a sense of smell that has a distinctly funerary quality, evoking a passage between one realm of existence and another.
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In the photo
1. Carrie Schneider, Arsenale
2. Kaloki Nyamai, Arsenale
3. Tabita Rezaire, Arsenale
4. Ayrson Heráclito, Arsenale
5. Nicholas Hlobo, Arsenale
The work that moved us the most in the entire Central Exhibition was *People’s Desire* by Sawangwongse Yawnghwe. Six meters of 2,500 clay figurines—families, people in boats—captured in the midst of a mass exodus. It is the exodus of the Rohingya, Karen, Kachin, and Shan—the peoples of Myanmar stripped of everything in the longest civil war in contemporary history. Yawnghwe has been calling it genocide since 2014. It’s impossible not to wonder how many other exoduses we have turned a blind eye to.
Rose Salane presents two distinct works that dialogue with one another from a distance.
*Mercurial New York* is a video that captures and listens to people—almost all of whom are immigrants—who, in their everyday lives in New York, speak in their own languages or switch from one to another depending on whom they encounter. It is the city’s layered fabric expressed through language. In another space, Salane brings a batch of rings found at a pawn shop and hands them to a medium to analyze their energies. These are objects that hold presences within them—presences that ask to be recognized.
Guadalupe Rosales’s work is welcoming and celebratory of a Chicana youth culture in Los Angeles that has since evolved toward other aesthetics. Yet, as one engages with it, it’s hard not to reflect on a broader trend: the practice of encapsulating the aesthetics and narratives of one’s cultural background within exhibitions or works of art—often carried out by artistə who have distanced themselves from those communities to live in the world’s major cultural capitals. “Subject matter is form,” as the saying goes. But it’s not always clear how the benefits—both symbolic and economic—of such exposure are subsequently redistributed, or whether they truly benefit the communities—large or small, millennia-old or temporary—that produced those cultures.
It’s a tension that runs throughout the Biennale, and one worth keeping in mind.
We’ll return to this later, in the “Themes” section, a new feature in this year’s guide.
In the photo
Guadalupe Rosales, Arsenale
Sawangwongse Yawnghwe, Arsenale
Raed Yassin’s “Yassin Haute Couture” series also explores the theme of absence—what is missing because it is far away, because it is gone, because it is part of a diaspora, because it never makes you feel whole. The artist’s father was a fashion designer who worked in Saudi Arabia and was assassinated during the Lebanese Civil War. In series such as *Proposal for a Proposal*, Yassin imagines the embroidered patterns his father might have designed, drawing inspiration from old family photographs. He designs what his father was unable to design. It is an act of filial imagination, and at the same time a reconstruction: where absence has severed a thread, the work embroiders another in its place.
The final section of the Arsenale, on the other hand, calls for a different kind of attention. There are many well-executed illustrations and research projects, but—perhaps because this isn’t the right format for them—they struggle to transcend the realm of research and become true works of art. This is a space best visited over the course of several months, much like returning to an archive, rather than as an intense sensory and expressive experience. It’s worth knowing this in advance so you can pace yourself.
In the photo
Raed Yassin, Arsenale
Raed Yassin, Arsenale
Arsenale: Three national pavilions worth visiting
SLOVENIA PAVILION
Built from scrap materials left over from previous pavilions, the Nonument Group’s *Soundtrack for an Invisible House* is a sound sculpture on a platform that resembles a ruin. It functions as both a shelter and an amplifier. The inspiration is a “nonument”—the ruins of the Log pod Mangartom mosque, built for Bosnian soldiers serving on the front lines during World War I and then quickly destroyed in deference to that new, defining Islamophobia that is one of the fundamental pillars of the construction of European identity. Whispers, songs, and shepherds’ calls enliven the space, while mirrors multiply the ruins ad infinitum. The pavilion invites visitors to rest, contemplate, and listen. It is among the few works that truly succeed in striking a minor key without turning it into a spectacle.
ITALY PAVILION
*Con te con tutto* is a project curated by Cecilia Canziani, dedicated to the work of Chiara Camoni. It works—and it really works—it’s a magical pavilion that whispers and surprises.
The two Tese delle Vergini are arranged in opposite ways: the first vertically, the second horizontally. In the first, in the dim light, twenty-four life-size sculptures welcome the public; their bodies contain plant matter, plastics, debris, and objects. Archaic and solemn, they resemble deities gazing at one another and at those who enter. In the second room, bathed in natural light, a world under construction—a domestic extension made up of tables, cabinets, and surfaces that house works by other artists (this is the “Dialogues” section), as well as places to sit, rest, and discuss. The pavilion reveals ways of life through a rich and meticulously curated public program that resonates with the works and their creative process.Thanks to a note from assistant curator Giulia Gaibisso, we can tell you with certainty (otherwise it’s unclear) that the installation with strobe lights, aptly titled “disco tornio,” is accessible to the public: you can sit down, make a vase, experience the exhibition with your hands—not just with your sight and hearing—and think of the jars arranged around the potter’s wheel as a club crowd gathered around a DJ.
There is also a detail that deserves special attention—and it’s not just any detail. The captions in the pavilion are written in two parallel languages: the “official” language of art criticism, and plain language—writing free of technical jargon, designed for those unfamiliar with the vocabulary of art criticism. This means breaking down an invisible yet towering barrier—of education, vocabulary, and social class—and creating a space for “ordinary” people to engage with contemporary art—people whom the art world never encounters, except as extras, caricatures, or subjects to be portrayed. Above all, for people with disabilities, those who are neurodivergent, and “non-experts,” it means feeling truly seen. It allows them to focus, to pause, and to not feel as though they’re starting the visit with a weight on their shoulders. It’s about time, and for once, Italy is ahead of many other countries on this issue.
TURKEY PAVILION
“A Kiss on the Eyes ” by Nilbar Güreş begins with an observation: certain structures do not manifest themselves openly, yet they shape our lives. The works in the pavilion make them visible—and subvert them.
Fabric, macramé, wool, and thread intertwine with steel, brass, copper, and everyday objects. No material is neutral: every fabric carries a story of class and labor. The skirts are the most direct example—Güreş stacks them vertically and overturns the social order: those who are always at the bottom are at the top, and those who are always at the top are at the bottom.
The title comes from the Turkish expression Gözlerinizden öperim, “I kiss your eyes”—a phrase that closes letters and conversations, expressing care without pretense. Here, it becomes a gesture directed at visitors. Sculptures and installations remain close to the ground, resting or suspended: no linear narrative, spatial relationships in place of plot. It is one of the works that best responds to the call of minor keys. It does not illustrate them; it brings them to life.
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In the photo
1. Italian Pavilion, Chiara Camoni
2. Italian Pavilion, Chiara Camoni
3. Turkey Pavilion, Nilbar Güreş
4. Slovenia Pavilion, Nonument Group
A brief note on a problem as big as the world
You may have heard about the strong opposition—from artists, art workers, and the general public—to the admission of the Russian and Israeli pavilions to this year’s Biennale.
Both countries have for years been guilty of genocide, torture, aggression, and crimes against humanity. They are not the only ones, it is true—Venice is rife with cultural promotion initiatives by theocracies, oligarchs, and various dictatorships, and unfortunately, even Western countries do not fare well when they try to embody a purity that no reason of state can keep intact.
Israel, specifically, is not present at its usual location in the Giardini—which is currently undergoing renovation—and has been moved to the Arsenale, right across from the Saudi pavilion, a country with which it has no diplomatic relations. The coexistence is bizarre: the respective representatives scrutinize one another, study each other, and glare at one another. It deserves a moment’s pause and reflection simply for the irony of the Biennale’s choice of location—which, let us recall, is neither the Olympics nor the EU, and has always served as a model for understanding geopolitics rather than art in the strict sense.
Dissent has been voiced by many. On one side is ANGA, a broad movement of cultural workers who have been fighting on the ground for years to prevent the normalization of genocide in cultural contexts. On the other hand, Pussy Riot, in a more theatrical form. If there really is no way to exclude certain governments from Venice, it would be nice to give more space and official resources to legitimate dissent, without always having to climb over turnstiles, get hit with batons, and look like outlaws—it’s freedom of expression, deal with it.
Gardens
At the Giardini, the exhibition takes on a different tone. The space is more spread out, the works more fragmented, but—and this comes as a surprise—many pavilions have chosen to tie in with the theme of the main exhibition. This is not to be taken for granted, and it brings to the surface a sense of urgency that runs through the entire Biennale.
Incidentally, as you walk through the Gardens, you begin to notice visual threads that connect distant works and pavilions: the color blue, in a thousand shades, and circles, recurring like a ritual form. If you happen to slow your pace and start to recognize them, you’ll realize that these are no coincidences: they are the underlying currents of the exhibition.
CENTRAL PAVILION
Here we find a sense that was already present at the previous Biennale: something significant is happening with local artists from continents that, until recently, were on the periphery of the art world dominated by Europe and America. Many of the works—especially paintings and works on paper—tell stories of attempts and lessons learned independently, outside traditional academic circles.
Unfortunately, however, the way the works are displayed often fails to do them justice. On the contrary: sometimes they are confined to classic gallery display formats—large glass-fronted frames, wall-mounted arrangements—that force them into contexts where the significant technical disparity inevitably becomes apparent compared to other artists, perhaps their compatriots, who have studied at the large and expensive Euro-American art academies, gaining access to tools, technologies, and opportunities that make all the difference.
This juxtaposition, therefore, becomes problematic. It obscures the differences in privilege, education, and social class that are precisely what determine whether an artistic existence is considered “minor” or “major.” It is a tension that the curators perhaps intended to address, but which the display fails to convey.
There is also another recurring pattern: the founding myths of the artists’ countries of origin are often reinterpreted through a contemporary lens—the eco-queer/feminist perspective, identity politics, and decolonial theory.
Wangechi Mutu is an example of this register. However, one question regarding accessibility remains unresolved: to what extent are these critical languages legible outside the art world? In the contexts of origin for many artists, these interpretive frameworks are not always available or even desirable; in others, however, it almost seems as though they exist in an “untranslated” version—so authentic that it renders any attempt to create an accompanying philosophy ineffective. It is an open-ended reflection; there is no universal answer—at least not for me.
In the photo
Entrance to the Biennale Gardens. Courtesy of La Biennale
That said, there are works at the Giardini that are worth seeking out.
Beverly Buchanan is featured with an extensive body of work—models, videos, illustrations, collaborative projects—all dedicated to what are commonly called shacks, huts, or shanties, yet are in fact part of the vernacular architecture native to the southern United States, in which an African-West African approach to the construction of space remains visible. Buchanan asserts that these forms deserve full recognition: they are not a form of decay to be corrected, but legitimate ways of living (not least because they are often inhabited by people whose rights are denied).
Vera Tamari exhibits colorful, stylized olive trees, bearing the visible traces of her fingerprints and her personal, handcrafted touch. These olive trees represent Gaza; they represent loss; they represent the persistence of a hand that shapes the world despite everything.
Mohammed Joha presents one of the most powerful works in the pavilion. In his painted collages, he captures the lasting impression left by a glance at the landscapes of Gaza. But they could just as easily be Brazilian favelas, Jamaican neighborhoods, or French banlieues. It is a visual elegy, a eulogy for what remains after the artist—having moved from Palestine to Marseille—processes television images by superimposing them onto those etched in his memory from his previous life. The result is landscapes that appear abstract yet precisely capture the essence of those places and their apparent disorder. The heterogeneity of the forms echoes the heterogeneity of self-produced works—in stark contrast to the orderly, clean, and sterile aesthetic of major Western cities.
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In the photo
1. Vera Tamari, Gardens
2. Mohammed Joha, Gardens
3. Beverly Buchanan, Gardens
Sabian Baumann creates sculptures from clay that is deliberately left unfired. It is a small yet radical gesture: leaving the work in a state of vulnerability, unsealed by fire, subject to the passage of time. The form is chosen, but so is its impermanence.
Daniel Lind Ramos presents assemblages created from objects collected by many people, offering multiple opportunities to feel like part of the final work.
Billie Zangewa’s textile collages are among the most intimately serene works in the exhibition. She calls them“life lessons,” and that is exactly what they are: everyday life treated as subject matter, not as illustration.
On the upper floor, Sohrab Hura is an absolute must-see. His paintings weave together everyday life, family life, and historical events in a seemingly natural way, while also giving a nod to the language of memes. It’s the kind of perspective that makes you want to look at your own family photos with fresh eyes.
Marcia Kure concludes our tour of the Central Pavilion with her *Hair Jackets*: assemblages of dressmaker’s mannequins, wood, and synthetic hair, with heads that seem to be weeping on one another’s shoulders. A tender elegy that simultaneously reminds us of the industries and bodies from which that hair comes.
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In the photo
1. Daniel Lind Ramos, Gardens
2. Billie Zangewa, Gardens
3. Sohrab Hura, Gardens
4. Marcia Kure, Gardens
Gardens: Eight National Pavilions Worth Seeing
This year, as we mentioned, many pavilions have chosen to engage with the main exhibition. It doesn’t always work, but when it does—it really works.
KOREA PAVILION
It is one of the most successful. A membrane wraps around and protects the building as if it were a shell or a fortress—acupuncture as the central metaphor: it hurts, but it sets you free, and it runs through the building, inside and out. Inside, tailoring workstations reimagined for meditation, mourning, and the mending of inner wounds. You can sit down, even if no one tells you to. The space is a station for lost time, lost people, lost objects, and the lost freedom of the period between World War II and the country’s division—designed to process them. You can count the black sticks on display to begin a meditation: counting the days missed with those who are no longer here.
DENMARK PAVILION
Maja Malou Lyse’s exhibition reflects on the effect of images on the body and cells through the theme of assisted reproduction. Skillfully blending the absurd with reality, they hired porn actresses to work in a real sperm bank set up inside the pavilion. It’s unsettling, clinical, and is probably the most radical pavilion in the Giardini.
AUSTRIA PAVILION
Florentina Holzinger’s *Seaworld Venice* is one of the most talked-about pavilions, and for good reason. Holzinger has been working for years with water as both a subject and a symbol—high water, the water we drink and excrete, and the water we immerse ourselves in to emerge transformed. The pavilion presents itself as a machine-organism that is at once an underwater amusement park, a water treatment plant, and a sacred building, and it does one specific thing: it transforms visitors’ bodily fluids into habitable environments for the performers. “I live in your piss. Whose wet dream is this?” is a pavilion that complicates dualisms—purity and pollution, sin and atonement—and leaves those who pass through it with a few fewer ideas and a few more questions.
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In the photo
1. Korea Pavilion, Goen Choi and Hyeree Ro (Gardens)
2. Austrian Pavilion, Florentina Holzinger (Giardini) Courtesy of La Biennale
3. Denmark Pavilion, Maja Malou Lyse (Gardens)
JAPAN PAVILION
A divisive pavilion—grotesque, unsettling, at times repulsive and disarming. You enter a space filled with half-full baby bottles and little dolls that, surprisingly, most people pick up and cradle tenderly—they carry them around and look after them. When you change the diaper on the doll’s bottom, a QR code appears that leads to a haiku.
On the one hand, it’s an exploration of birth rates in an aging country, where the number of immigrants is growing slowly but policies and culture struggle to keep pace. On the other—and here lies the grotesque—it’s a machine that, perhaps, satisfies the desire for parenthood in a perfectly capitalist way, drawing on an activity many have done as children: holding and caring for a doll. You’re caring for an idea of a child, not an actual child.
POLAND PAVILION
"Liquid Tongues " by Bogna Burska and Daniel Kotowski is an audio-video installation in which a choir composed of both deaf and hearing people interprets whale communication codes and songs, using both spoken English and International Sign Language. The point is that underwater, language hierarchies are reversed. Deaf people can communicate freely through signs, while hearing people produce only distorted sounds. The water’s surface acts as a mirror in which the senses are reversed, and Deaf Gain—deafness as a culture, not as a deficiency—takes center stage. It is a pavilion that listens to a language beyond words, and that challenges those who think they know how to communicate.
BELGIAN PAVILION
Miet Warlop’s *IT NEVER SSST* transforms the pavilion into a high-intensity arena where language, music, and collective disorientation intertwine. Words written in chalk circulate through the space: continuously produced in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts, carried, passed from hand to hand, dragged, and broken. A group of musicianx and dancerx traverses a space in constant turmoil, singing and searching for meaning within disjointed fragments. They resist surrender, immobility, and the pressure of overload—even as their breaking points emerge.
When the performance ends, the pavilion does not return to silence. Words remain scattered across platforms climbing the walls, suspended in time like the remnants of a prayer wall, or a karaoke machine from a vanished civilization, awaiting new voices. It is a pavilion that blends choral harmony and elegy, leaving those who enter with the sensation of having witnessed a ritual halfway between an invocation and a funeral
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In the photo
1. Japan Pavilion, Ei Arakawa-Nash (Gardens) Courtesy of La Biennale
2. Polish Pavilion, Bogna Burska & Daniel Kotowski (Giardini)
3. Belgian Pavilion, Miet Warlop (Gardens)
CYPRUS PAVILION
“It rests to the bones” by Marina Xenofontos is one of those pavilions that leaves a lasting impression. Mechanical machines populate the space: “Passer,” an animatronic sparrow clinging to life, and “Threads,” copper cylinders that rotate on their own axes, producing a low, continuous industrial hum. These are not machines that imitate life—like the automata of the past—but machines that reveal something akin to life without imitating it: mechanical resilience, the physicality of repetition, endless loops.
Above all, the sound design: the folk songs of the Ayisilaou sisters, elderly members of Xenofontos’s family, recorded for the first and last time in 2020 in their village. Women excluded from male-dominated and liturgical musical traditions, who sang in the fields and after religious festivals—voices that were never meant to be archived, and which now serve as the soundtrack for an entire pavilion.
Below, in an almost empty hall, *Interior of a Nightclub* replicates the ceiling of the Perroquet, a venue that was once a symbol of Cyprus’s postcolonial future, sealed off since 1974 in the “ghost town” of Varosha following the Turkish invasion.
Machines that repeat. Voices that resist. A ceiling that remembers. Holding together a divided island, an excluded female memory, and what remains of a future that never arrived.
ROMANIA PAVILION
Black Seas — Scores for the Sonic Eye by Anca Benera & Arnold Estefán asks for something simple yet radical: to listen to the Black Sea as one would listen to a person. Spatialized sounds, moving images, sculptures, and a fundamental question: how do you repair a broken sea?
The Black Sea is not a passive surface. It is a multifaceted aquatic landscape, fed by rivers that carry with them Europe’s colonial, political, and ecological histories, and connected—since the time of Venice—to the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, and the Atlantic. In its oxygen-deprived depths, organic matter is preserved for millennia: the seabed becomes a living archive, and through ecological resurrection, suspended life forms return to the present. We understand the future by traveling backward in time.
The work also extends to the Romanian Cultural Institute in the city, where the Black Sea is placed in dialogue with other distant bodies of water. It is a pavilion that places the sea at the center as an interlocutor, capable of responding, understanding, and rejecting.
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In the photo
1. Cyprus Pavilion, Marina Xenofontos (Castello district)
2. Cyprus Pavilion, Marina Xenofontos
3. Romanian Pavilion, Anca Benera & Arnold Estefán (Giardini)
TEN THREADS: A New Perspective on the Biennale
What follows are not curatorial themes, but ten perspectives, ten threads that we recognized as we walked through the exhibition and that we feel are worth sharing. They intertwine, refer to one another, and sometimes contradict each other—just as the works do when they “speak” to one another from one room to another. They help us interpret the Biennale through practices, themes, and questions, rather than merely through pavilions and spaces. Try using them to glimpse the many undercurrents of this exhibition.
1. The Daily Newspaper and Its Beauty
The escape hidden in the repetition of work and family routines.
The hand as the last remaining tool after the failure of language and ideologies.
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In the photo
1. Nilbar Güreş (Turkey Pavilion): skirts, fabrics, and everyday objects stacked vertically to overturn the social hierarchies they usually uphold. Care as a gesture; everyday life as a battleground for rebellion.
2. Billie Zangewa (Central Pavilion, Giardini): textile collages, “life lessons,” everyday life as subject matter.
3. Hala Schoukair (Central Pavilion, Giardini): a meditative visual experience designed to rekindle the beauty of simple moments in harmony with nature.
4. Sohrab Hura (Central Pavilion, Giardini): paintings depicting daily life intertwined with family life and historical events.
2. Holding Together What the World Sets Apart
Traces, stitches, and signs of repairs as places to explore, where beauty and brutality, memory and oblivion go hand in hand.
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In the photo
1. Raed Yassin (Arsenale): sewing as a tool for reimagining the present based on memories and desires rooted in one’s past.
2. Kaloki Nyamai (Arsenale): sewing as a space where beauty and brutality go hand in hand
3. Marina Xenofontos (Cyprus Pavilion): an animatronic sparrow, rotating copper cylinders, and the songs of the family’s elderly women—machines that endure, silenced voices that persist, a divided island held together by the smallest details.
4. Nonument Group (Slovenia Pavilion): The Destroyed Bosnian Mosque, The Stitch of Memory Removed
3. The margin in the center
Waste materials, vernacular architecture, and lives relegated to the margins take center stage. Cardboard, shacks, forgotten objects, and the communities that inhabit them: what progress had excluded returns to the forefront as a foundation and a resource—not merely as decoration.
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In the photo
1. Sawangwongse Yawnghwe, (Arsenale): to portray the victims of conflicts between nations in their universality as human beings, united by the same desires and hopes.
2. Daniel Lind Ramos: works composed of objects collected from many people, which are reflected in the sculptures
3. General installation at the Arsenale: sound-absorbing cardboard, plywood, and humble materials as an intentional curatorial choice
4. Sohrab Hura (Central Pavilion, Giardini): paintings on recycled cardboard, with hidden paintings to discover inside
5. Margaret Whyte (Uruguay Pavilion): Waste materials as the foundation of the artwork
6. Beverly Buchanan (Central Pavilion, Giardini): shacks and huts as vernacular architecture in their own right
7. Mohammed Joha, (Central Pavilion, Giardini): Landscapes of Gaza, favelas, banlieues: the heterogeneity of self-produced works in contrast to the orderly Western aesthetic
4. If God is dead, the gods are more alive than ever
Altars, rituals, and deities from subjugated cultures continue to exert their influence through the artists’ practices. These are not mere remnants of folklore, but active forces of healing, strength, and prayer.
In the photo
Ayrson Heráclito (Arsenale): “Juntò,” sculptures made of joined and welded steel that form a taxonomic archive of contemporary deities and their powers over everyday life
Tabita Rezaire (Arsenale): “Omo Elu” and “Mother Trinity,” tapestries for Yemaya featuring a Palestinian flag made of seashells at the center, created through a collaborative and participatory process
5. Cultivating the Unfinished
Unfired clay, sculptures in progress, installations still a work in progress. A rejection of the closed aesthetic of the finished object. The Hungarian Pavilion and many others present open-ended processes and inconclusive clues.
In the photo
Sabian Baumann (Central Pavilion, Giardini): sculptures made of clay that has been deliberately left unfired
6. Language Beyond Words
The underwater world, the song of the whales, the sense of smell, the frequencies. When words aren’t enough, communication takes on a different form.
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In the photo
1. Kader Attia (Arsenale): dried lemons suspended high above, their scent serving as a threshold
2. Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser (Arsenale): “Subcontinentment,” hand-woven Arctic soundscapes
3. Bogna Burska & Daniel Kotowski (Poland Pavilion): "Liquid Tongues," whale song, underwater sign language
4. Dan Lie (Arsenale): flowers, seeds, spores, soil, and hemp ropes that continue to live, decompose, and sprout throughout the exhibition. A language composed of scent, organic matter, and time—one that explores death beyond the presence-absence dichotomy.
5. Nicholas Hlobo (Arsenale): The Sense of Smell as a Bridge Between Realms
7. Subject matter is form
Cultures and “subcultures” enter art spaces as space-time capsules where theme and form are no longer distinguishable. How can we repay the debt of representation to the context of origin when an entire community is being “represented” for artistic purposes?
In the photo
Guadalupe Rosales: Chicana youth in Los Angeles captured and brought into the art world
8. In the Silence, the Minor Keys
Listening as a human and political practice. Without silence and concentration, it is impossible to hear the subtler tones. Listening not as a passive act, but as a conscious choice.
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In the photo
1. Pauline Oliveros (Arsenale): The Space of Deep Listening—a sound and meditative practice that shaped an entire generation of sound artists
2. Pauline Oliveros, sound-absorbing cardboard, muffled sounds, a design that complements the curation
3. Khaled Sabsabi (Arsenale): Khalil, Sufi Listening as a Contemplative Practice
4. Anca Benera & Arnold Estefán (Romanian Pavilion): Listening as a Method. The Black Sea not as a surface, but as a voice—a sound archive that understands, responds, and rejects.
9. Elegy: Grief as Common Ground
When language is no longer enough to explain and hold the world together, what remains are abstraction, memory, and shared gestures. Pain—not as a collective spectacle, but as a terrain to traverse together.
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In the photo
1. Marcia Kure, (Central Pavilion, Giardini): “Hair jackets” featuring heads that seem to be weeping on each other’s shoulders, made of synthetic hair that reflects on the extractive industry that produces it and the gendered labor associated with it.
2. Vera Tamari, (Central Pavilion, Giardini): olive trees painted with fingerprints
3. Goen Choi and Hyeree Ro (Korea Pavilion): sticks for counting the days until the event
5. Berni Searle (Arsenale): video following the fire at the African Library in Cape Town
6. Mohammed Joha (Central Pavilion, Giardini): Landscapes—An Elegy for Gaza, Marseille, Overlapping Memories
10. The Image Beneath the Skin
When the visual is no longer a representation but an ingredient: it fertilizes, activates, and shapes the flesh—and sometimes creates desire even before the object of desire exists.
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In the photo
1. Carrie Schneider (Arsenale): the Herculean task of re-translating sexist depictions from the history of cinema into something tangible. Failure as the only honest way to transition from the virtual to the body
2. Maja Malou Lyse (Denmark Pavilion): a sperm bank featuring porn actors at work: the image as an agent of fertilization, science fiction becoming biology
3. Ei Arakawa-Nash (Japan Pavilion): dolls, hanging baby bottles, haiku-QR codes: the exercise in procreation that is also—and perhaps above all—the capitalist fulfillment of the desire to be a parent. One cares for an idea of a child, not a child.
In closing
A Biennale is always two things at once: a barometer of the present and an exercise in imagination about what might come next. In *Minor Keys*, this is particularly true. It is an exhibition that does not shout, in a world that now speaks only in a loud voice. It is an exhibition that asks for time, in an economy of attention that has made time its first victim. It is an orphaned exhibition, put together after the death of its creator. We leave with the feeling of having experienced something that is both unfinished and precious. The contradictions are there—the overload, the privilege, the class divide, the lack of a conductor. But there are also moments when the minor keys become a shared frequency: Pauline Oliveros’s “deep listening” archive, the Italian pavilion that speaks two languages, the Polish choir underwater, Yawnghwe’s 2,500 fleeing figurines, and Goliath’s elegy that found its way even in the face of censorship. Perhaps this is precisely the gift of *In Minor Keys*: not to give us answers, but to restore a space where intimate and difficult questions can be asked in a whisper.
And as they say in Venice, “Those who speak softly tell the truth.”
Niccolò Moronato with Alice Jasmine Crippa, for That’s Contemporary.