At the Venice Biennale on May 7, 2026, Cuban artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons led a poetry caravan across seven locations in the Giardini to honor Koyo Kouoh, the late curator of the Biennale's main exhibition "In Minor Keys," who died of cancer at age 57 in 2025. The procession, inspired by a 1999 voyage Kouoh took with nine African poets from Dakar to Timbuktu, featured performances by poets Natalie Diaz, Robin Coste Lewis, Batool Abu Akleen, and Anne Waldman, kora player Saliou Cissokho, and Kouoh's husband, Swiss saxophonist Philippe Mall, who played a composition dedicated to her. The event was organized by a team of Kouoh's assistants and advisers, including Marie Hélène Pereira, who served as stand-in lead of the 2026 Biennale.
This tribute matters because it transformed a moment of personal and collective mourning into a public, participatory act of resistance and remembrance within the high-stakes commercial environment of the Venice Biennale, directly confronting the separation between commerce and conscience at one of the art world's most prominent events. By centering poetry, music, and African diasporic voices, the caravan honored Kouoh's curatorial legacy and her commitment to amplifying marginalized perspectives, while also demonstrating how art can serve as a vehicle for grief, solidarity, and political expression in a global forum.