2026 Venice Biennale Forges on With the Vision of Late Curator Koyo Kouoh

News ‘Deeply Saddened and Dismayed’: Koyo Kouoh, Curator of 2026 Venice Biennale, Has Died Elaine YJ Zheng

The Venice Biennale’s 2026 edition will move forward with the plans of its late curator Koyo Kouoh, who passed earlier this month. 

It was revealed this week that the plans the Cameroonian-Swiss curator had already set in motion would come to fruition, including artist selection, desired commissions, programming, and a central theme.

Biennale president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco said the fair is committed to realising Kouoh’s exhibition ‘as she designed it, as she imagined it, as she gave it to [him] personally’. The original press conference to announce details was scheduled for 20 May.

Titled In Minor Keys and opening on 9 May next year, the exhibition will be run by the Kouoh-selected team of curators Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Helene Pereira, and Rasha Salti; editor Siddartha Mitter; and assistant Rory Tsapayi.

In a press conference on Tuesday, advisors read excerpts by Kouoh, including invitations to breathe, adding the exhibition will emphasise ‘the sensory, the affective, and the subjective’ and focus on artists whose practice ‘seamlessly bleed into society’.

Concluding the conference, Tsapayi read a 2022 poem by Kouoh: ‘And quite frankly, I am tired,’ she said. ‘People are tired. We are all tired. The world is tired. Even art itself is tired. Perhaps the time has come. We need something else. We need to heal… .’

Kouoh died earlier this month at 57, following a cancer diagnosis. She was the first African-born woman curator to be appointed to the role.

Further details will be announced in Venice on 25 February 2026. —[O]

Main image: Exhibition view: Doruntina Kastrati, The Echoing Silences of Metal and Skin, Kosovo Pavilion, The 60th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia (20 April–24 November 2024). Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia. Photo: Andrea Avezzù.