The 61st Venice Biennale, titled "In Minor Keys," opens amid turmoil: its curator Koyo Kouoh died of cancer during planning, and the festival jury resigned after a controversial statement about excluding Israel and Russia from prizes, replaced by a Eurovision-style people's choice award. The main exhibition, completed by a team of five collaborators using Kouoh's plans, features over 110 artists and collectives, with highlights including works by Big Chief Demond Melanchon, Tammy Nguyen, Guadalupe Maravilla, Ayrson Heráclito, and a section focused on Michael Armitage's Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute.
This biennale matters because it arrives at a moment of global chaos and institutional crisis, testing whether art can respond meaningfully to political fracture and personal loss. The show's themes—healing, colonialism, family histories, and ecological concerns—reflect the dominant currents of recent global contemporary art, but also risk feeling familiar. The absence of Kouoh, a revered curator, leaves the exhibition haunted by questions of what might have been, making it both a tribute and a barometer of the art world's current state.