Venice, Turned Down Low: Koyo Kouoh's "In Minor Keys" and the Biennale She Left Us
Some exhibitions shout. The 61st Venice Biennale asked us to lean in and listen.
When Koyo Kouoh was named artistic director in October 2024, she became the first African woman to lead the Biennale in its 130-year history. For many of us who work on African and diasporic art, it felt like a door finally swinging open. Then, in May 2025, Kouoh died at 57, shortly after a cancer diagnosis. She was a year away from opening day.
What happened next is the real story of 2026. Rather than replace her vision, the Biennale chose to realize it exactly as she designed it. Her hand-picked team — curators Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira and Rasha Salti, editor Siddhartha Mitter, and assistant Rory Tsapayi — carried "In Minor Keys" to completion. It opened on May 9, 2026, and runs through November 22.
Why "minor keys"?
In music, a minor key is the blues, the lament, the hum, the call and response. Kouoh used it as a philosophy. Her curatorial text asked artists and audiences to step away from the spectacle and noise of the present and tune in to quieter frequencies: care, ritual, small islands of dignity. Artists, she wrote, are channels to those frequencies, and the curator's job is to listen to them rather than speak for them.
That idea shaped everything, from her hand-drawn map of the show to a heavy program of performances and activations across all venues during opening week. Roughly 111 artists took part.
What lingered
A few moments I keep returning to:
Big Chief Demond Melançon, the New Orleans Black Masking Indian artist, brought a monumental beaded suit — glass beads, rhinestones, velvet and feathers — that turned the Arsenale into a second line.
RAW Material Company's Book Pavilion in the Giardini. RAW is the Dakar art center Kouoh founded in 2008, so finding it inside Venice felt like her signature on the wall.
Denniston Hill, the artist-run residency in upstate New York, and photographer Sohrab Hura, whose tender work carried exactly the intimacy the title promised.
The debate
Not everyone agreed on what they saw. Some critics found the show far more "major" than minor in scale and emotion. Others argued that its quiet register made it too reticent about state violence and politics. Frieze's reviewer suggested that its strongest moments came from the institutions Kouoh herself built over decades.
I think that may be the most fitting tribute. Kouoh didn't make exhibitions just to show objects. She made them to embolden artists and build lasting networks. The relationships formed in Venice this year — between artists, curators, writers and institutions across Africa and its diasporas — will keep echoing long after the pavilions close.
If you go: "In Minor Keys" is open until November 22, 2026. Give yourself at least two full days, and leave time to sit, listen, and let the quieter works find you.
Sources: ArtAsiaPacific, ArtReview, Domus, Frieze, The Art Newspaper