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museum exhibitions calendar_today Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Annalee Davis at the 2026 Venice Art Biennale. Landscape as mourning, archive and resistance in the Barbados Pavilion

Annalee Davis alla Biennale Arte di Venezia 2026. Il paesaggio come lutto, archivio e resistenza nel Padiglione Barbados

Annalee Davis, an artist from Barbados, will represent her country at the 2026 Venice Biennale with an installation titled "Let this be my Cathedral" within the exhibition "In Minor Keys." The work addresses ecological grief, colonial memory, and the possibility of care without erasing conflict, using suspended plants and organic materials to create a threshold where loss, vulnerability, and wonder remain in tension. Davis discusses the influence of curator Koyo Kouoh, whose vision shaped the Biennale, and the importance of research as an integral part of her artistic process.

This matters because Davis's approach challenges the tendency of contemporary art to merely illustrate ecological collapse, instead treating landscape as a living archive of colonial history. Her participation in a major international exhibition like the Venice Biennale amplifies Caribbean perspectives that are often flattened by European gaze, while her installation offers a nuanced model for engaging with environmental grief that refuses easy consolation or spectacle.