Between protests and strikes, politics was ever-present at the 2026 Biennale Opening. Art was overshadowed – but many artists, too, brought meaning and reflection. A path through the margins following silences and Minor Keys. The Art Biennale is alive and well – this year, it compels you to take a stand.
A lot has been written about the 61st Art Venice Biennale, even more has been said. As the magazines were publishing and Instagram pages were posting constantly, the whole city was commenting. It was everywhere: the conversation literally took over and occupied every calle and every campo. A lot of it, to be fair, was more about political controversies than it was about the art. Although drawing a straight line between the two is hardly possible, or desirable. The relationship between art and politics however has largely – and better – been discussed elsewhere. It is known, and inevitable. Yet, this time, the general debate ended up far outshining the content of the Pavilions.
A BIENNALE STORMED BY PROTESTS
The political charge of the time we are living through completely took over, overflowing, like an uncontrollable tide. The Biennale became one with the city and its protests. Palestinian flags and posters stormed the exhibitions. Not just those carried by demonstrators, but also – and especially – the artists themselves who decided to place them on their own works to take a stand. Many Pavilions remained empty through the preview days, a poster reading “Palestine is the future of the world” in place of artists and press offices.
Pussy Riot protested the much-contested Russian Pavilion and held a demonstration around the city. I was queuing at the ticket office when I met Johannes, a member of the collective: “the premise is all wrong,” he said, “The Biennale is built on an old-world order, that revolves entirely around nationalities and borders. But borders are there to exclude. They are the premise for everything that’s happening”. Then he goes on to advocate (unsuccessfully) for his preview pass, that he says was withdrawn due to his taking part in the protest.
ART AND PUBLIC DEBATE
Debates permeated the whole Biennale structure and forced every passer-by to take a stand, or at least to join the conversation. Looking at each artwork then, walking through each Pavilion, it was inevitable to consider every piece differently – with a question constantly in the background: Where do I stand? It was not always easy to be present and consider art for art’s sake – if such a thing can even exist today. Contradictions seemed to be everywhere, with a certain uneasiness. The art, somewhat in the background, at times struggled to surface. Power dynamics were visible and at the forefront. And maybe this is exactly what In Minor Keys was supposed to do: open up perspectives, point at the colonised and the colonisers, at those who celebrate the world and those who see it as their next economic asset. Make differences visible through art. As the quote by James Baldwin chosen by late curator Koyo Kouoh (who did not live to see her work realised) to present the exhibition read, “There is a reason, after all, that some people wish to colonize the moon, / and others dance before it as an ancient friend.”
CONTRADICTIONS AND MINOR KEYS, ART AT THE MARGINS
As often happens – coherently with this year’s theme too – the key to reading the 61st Biennale, at least for me, was to be found in the margins, or slightly outside of them. This year’s Italian Pavilion within the Arsenale, titled Con Te con Tutto – with you with everything is undoubtedly poetic: Chiara Camoni engages with the theme of collaboration, co-creation and co-agitation through her clay sculptures. The result is at once delicate and somewhat rough, earthy and meaningful. Yet, significantly, the most touching, different, inspired works were in unexpected places.
GEOGRAPHIES OF DISTANCE, THE INDIAN PAVILION
As everyone was talking and posting about the Austrian and Japanese Pavilions, which both stretch aesthetics to their limits to convey their very contemporary messages, screaming for the viewers’ attention – and undoubtedly getting it – a visit to the Indian Pavilion had the power to suspend time. India, although it is the most populated country in the world, does not have a permanent Pavilion. It remains, even in the face of the magnitudes it moves, largely marginalised by Western institutions. It returns in 2026 after an absence that lasted seven long years. The work presented is stunning – there is no other way to describe it. In Geographies of Distance – Remembering Home, five Indian artists who no longer live in their home country or region (Alwar Balasubramaniam, Sumakshi Singh, Ranjani Shettar, Asim Waqif, and Skarma Sonam Tashi) come together to represent what home feels like in their memories, dreams, and visions. Although nothing is left to chance and every little detail in the artworks as much as the curation is precisely pondered and balanced, the final result has the rare power of standing on its own feet. There would be no need for explanation – the works speak loudly to anyone who has experienced leaving home and thinking back. So loudly that, for the whole time I stand there, the room is completely silent. Even walking around takes care and gentleness.
In the world, 304 million people no longer live in their country of origin: almost four percent of the population. One in eight people, if we look at internal migration too. That is, 700 million people do not live where they were born. In Permanent Address, Sumakshi Singh created a dream-like installation made with thread, textiles, and embroidery. Architectural fragments of a home stand light and suspended mid-air against a dark background: in bits and pieces, the only way humans are given to remember. Drift by Alwar Balasubramaniam is designed to be either the first or the last work visitors see (the Pavilion has two access points). A gigantic, cracked earth piece made with clay, stone, and organic matter reminds us that, as the tradition wants, we come from earth and are bound to go back to it. As he was making the piece, Balasubramaniam left it outside for the rain, the climate, animals and insects to mould it – as a reminder that earth is made for, and by, all species and elements together. Opposite Sumakshi’s floating house, Ranjani Shettar creates a garden, her flowers, made of handwoven cotton fabric, steel, and lacquer, are suspended too. It is the desire to finally find a garden where we can rest.
LOSS AND LIGHT IN THE UZBEK PAVILION
Uzbekistan’s Pavilion deals with the disappearance of the Aral Lake, at the border with Kazakhstan, due to climate change. “If the climate crisis is a failure of the imagination,” writes the curator, “then imagination is the way the Aral Sea will survive”. The result, in apparent contradiction with the theme of loss, is pure light: To make sense of the loss of the lake, 18-year-old Uzbek writer Allayar Darmenov has invented new mythologies: “In his stories, swordfish visit the remains of the saxaul forests, swim through the water, and recall the years of the desert. His repopulated Aral is a place where fairy tales mirror real life, where fantasy becomes reality”.
THE PEOPLE’S DESIRE
In the Central Pavilion in the Arsenale, Burmese artist Sawangwongse Yawnghwe explores genocidal economies and what brings them into being. His People’s Desire is an example of 2500 clay figurines depicting men, women and children as they either walk or float during the exodus linked to the genocide in Myanmar. In front of them, a plaque, also titled The People’s Desire, reads: “1. Oppose those relying on external elements, acting as stooges, holding negative views / 2. Oppose those trying to jeopardise the stability of the State and the progress of the nation / 3. Oppose foreign nations interfering in the internal affairs of the State / 4. Crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy”. The text comes from a document used as propaganda by the Burmese military junta in the 1990s which, the work suggests, contributed to the cultural and political bases for the repression that started in the 1980s and later culminated in the genocide of the Rohingya people of 2016-2017. Through his works at the Biennale, Yawnghwe manages to connect the dots between his personal history in Myanmar, the ongoing genocide in Palestine and the war in Ukraine, underlining the violence of the decolonisation process.
ART AND SILENCE IN TEGENE KUNBI’S WORK
Proceeding towards the margins, silence is at the heart of the Ethiopian Pavilion as well. Here, Tegene Kunbi presents Shapes of Silence. If the Indian Pavilion doesn’t have a fixed spot, the Ethiopian one is hard to even find. Placed somewhere behind Santa Maria della Pietà, through the maze of small Venetian calli, it is definitely worth a visit. Kunbi combines painting with textiles, putting together handmade fabrics by his grandmother and bits of mass-produced pieces for the African market. His works are massive, some are floor-to-ceiling, taking over whole walls of Palazzo Bollani. Despite the title, his works are all but silent. Bright and intense colours are all over. Yet, as curator Abebaw Ayalew explains, “Silence is what defines sound, you can’t have one without the other. If you clap your hands, the clapping is created by the silence before and after it. You can’t have one without the other. In his practice Tegene looks at this definition of silence and what finding your voice in a world where you don’t speak the language looks like”. The works have no titles and little explanation: once again, they speak for themselves.
NEUROPLASTICITY IN ZIMBABWE’S PAVILION
A short walk from Kunbi’s exhibition, Zimbabwe’s Pavilion is located on the third floor of a back building, opposite to Santa Maria della Pietà. Artists Gideon Gomo, Eva Raath, Felix Shumba, Franklyn Dzingai and Pardon Mapondera tackle the theme of neuroplasticity and “what happens when the brain’s ability to reprogram itself encounters a world reshaped by technology, crisis and imagination”. Colourful collages, loud paintings, textiles and mixed media create a dialogue on the future, and present, of art and human expression. With his gigantic collages, Dzingai reflects on the composite nature of time and the “invisible transmissions, creative, emotional, technological, that animate artistic production”.
EXHAUSTED ARTISTS ON SHOW
Walking around the city, a space of the smallest dimensions, with no artworks in it, will catch the attentive viewer’s attention too. On the small windows of Terzospazio, in Calle del Tentor, red lettering reads “Organised Rest in Times of Uprising: a Room for exhausted art workers”. Here, from May 5th to June 15th, Osservatorio Futura, Parsec and Sara d’Alessandro Manozzo co-curate a public program dealing with the uneven material conditions that characterise art workers, and the solidarity that emerges from them. A space to display the reality of artists, creatives and professionals working in the field. The result is an incredibly spontaneous participatory installation designed to reflect on the current situation, the injustices and complex power dynamics it carries.
WALKING ON THE MARGINS, PAULO NAZARETH
Outside the scope of the Biennale, at Punta della Dogana, Paulo Nazareth literally walks along the margins. It is refreshing to see such an unfiltered, contemporary, raw way of making art in a location like Punta della Dogana. Nazareth’s exhibition, titled algebra, takes up the whole upper floor. The premise, in the curatorial text, is simple and straight to the point: “Maps are not neutral,” it reads, “Through grids and lines, empires shape lands and individuals, reducing them to mere units so that they can count, tax and control everything. The lines seem abstract, yet they bear the weight of conquest”. Through his practices, the Brazilian artist takes a journey walking through African and South American states, collecting objects and stories dealing with borders, migration, the extraction related to the indigenous image and the material one that Western countries are still perpetrating. In line with the underlying theme of the balance of power and visibility within In Minor Keys, every single piece in the show is an uncomfortable reminder that colonialism lives on – and that it is our place, and time, to fight against it.
Blinded by polemics and protests, some have claimed that the Biennale is in decline, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. The proof is Kouoh’s decision to include only living artists in the International Pavilion, many of them presented for the first time. Within this framework, Venice opens up to a plurality of narratives. Stay alert then as you visit it, engage, and take a stand.
LINK
- Laila Ajjawi: “Something a girl was not supposed to do” - June 19, 2026
- The Art Biennale is alive and well - May 22, 2026
- What is real but invisible. Edouard Souhaid on building new realities with abstract art - April 24, 2026
