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<\/div>\n<\/div>Dan Lie <\/strong>presents\u00a0Temple of Passages<\/em>\u00a0(2026), a large-scale installation of scented flowers; they are strung together via maritime rope, recalling the history of this warehouse of the Arsenale where such fibers were once knotted. In the Arsenale\u2019s garden, Wardha Shabbir<\/strong>\u2018s\u00a0A Home Is Where My Leaves Are<\/em>\u00a0is a red-painted bronze sculpture that combines different plants that adapt to, survive, and ultimately thrive in the most extreme and hostile of conditions. Clay sculptures by the likes of Seyni Awa Camara <\/strong>and C\u00e9lia V\u00e1squez Yui<\/strong> are given prominent places in the Giardini, contrasted by the work of an artist like Sabian Baumann<\/strong>, who works with unfired clay, crafting sculptures of stacked forms that are inherently unstable, as they could return to the earth from which they are formed at any second.<\/p>\n \n\tShabbir\u2019s idyllic gouache paintings delicately meld depictions of plant life with colorful geometric shapes, relating them in the way you might see in a home\u2019s courtyard garden. Mohammed Joha<\/strong> shows a series of watercolors titled\u00a0No Shelter 12-29<\/em>\u00a0(2025) that render the landscape of Gaza, which he imbues with color, rebutting Israel\u2019s destruction of this land that has been ongoing since 2023. Ebony G. Patterson<\/strong>\u2018s gleaming\u00a0\u2026fester\u2026<\/em>\u00a0(2023) presents dozens of yards of Jacquard floral fabric that have been further embellished with glitter, lace, beads, and more. The density of the work recalls a rainforest or jungle, but as its title implies and the work\u2019s verso reveals\u2014an innumerable mound of red-painted hands through which black thorns sprout\u2014behind such depictions of the Caribbean as beautiful hide the brutal history of colonialism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n \n\tBut the earth isn\u2019t always a verdant place, some of the artists in the exhibition remind us. Theo Eshetu<\/strong>\u2019s Garden of the Broken Hearted <\/em>(2026) is a large olive tree on a rotating platform that has been transported from an undisclosed location; once a site of respite and gathering, it bears the scars of conflict, yet has still survived. Manuel Mathieu<\/strong>\u2019s mixed-media painting GENOCIDE<\/em> (2026) shows a coastal landscape, almost certainly Gaza, whose sandy landscapes look like bruised flesh, while the sea is a deep black. Bonnie Devine<\/strong> presents a suite of eight landscape paintings tiled \u201cLand in War,\u201d that shows once vibrant scenes that have been transformed into noxious places at the hands of empire: in one, a biplane is set across a bright red sky, the plumes of smoke, from a bomb it just dropped seen in the distance. Dawn DeDeaux<\/strong>\u2019s Dirt Bowl Table<\/em> (2021) collects soil samples from around the world, visualizing the ills wrought by climate change on our mother earth, a plea in a way not to abandon her or cause more ruin. \u00a0<\/p>\n Vera Tamari<\/strong>\u2019s subtle installation, Mantra<\/em>, places ceramic renditions of the seeds of Astomaea seselifolia<\/em>, a plant native to Palestine and other parts of the Mediterranean, that \u201cgrows freely among vineyards and olive groves,\u201d though some have labeled it a weed and the British Mandate identified it as one of 32 such species that should be exterminated, according to a wall label. In a stunning room by collective fierce pussy\/arms ache avid aeon, Zoe Leonard <\/strong>presents images of the US-Mexico borderlands, where a border patrol helicopter hovers overheard, surveilling and policing a landscape scarred by geopolitical division, while Joy Episalla<\/strong>\u2019s foldtogram (brackwish waters, NYC \/ Venezia, rcp 95 ft x 50 in), iteration 1<\/em> is a massive sheet of light-sensitive paper picturing a landscape that has been crumbled into a messy pile. <\/p>\n \n\tRelatedly, multiple works in the Arsenale look at the histories of extractivism. Florence Lazar<\/strong>\u2019s 125 Hectacres<\/em> features farmer V\u00e9ronique Montjean tells us that the lush land you see \u201cisn\u2019t some utopia,\u201d but a place where local, diversified vegetation once grew and via colonialism was replaced by cash crops like bananas and sugar for export to Europe; to this day, international aid to farmers often goes to support these kinds of lands, as opposed to small farmers. Sawangwongse Yawnghwe\u2019s<\/strong> paintings present dense charts that map the world order, connecting, for example, \u201cuniversal lack\u201c with a red line to \u201cfetishism of commodities.\u201d This comes to a head in Alfredo Jaar<\/strong>\u2019s The End of the World<\/em>, a red-lit, cathedral-styled space that on one end lists eight metals, including cobalt, lithium, and copper, that are essential to contemporary life and whose mining is at the center of geopolitical conflicts and illness to those who mine them. At the other end, he has pressed them into a 4-centimeter-square that risks aestheticizing these important concerns but that is also, if taken apart, would be among the most valuable objects on view in the Biennale.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n \n\tAt the heart of the exhibition are two deceased artists, Issa Samb <\/strong>and Beverly Buchanan<\/strong>, whose ways of thinking animate \u201cIn Minor Keys,\u201d with multiple galleries, called \u201cShrines,\u201d in the Central Pavilion dedicated to their work. In one section, we see a translation of Samb\u2019s\u00a0La Cour<\/em>\u00a0(The Yard<\/em>), his \u201cpermanent and ever-evolving installation of a courtyard-home-studio,\u201d which Kouoh picked as the most influential work of the 2010s; a video by Adrienne Edwards, projected over some of his sculptures, gives life to this. Most impressive here is the love and care given to Buchanan and her expansive practice. Underrecognized for her groundbreaking contributions to Land Art, Buchanan comes into full focus in \u201cIn Minor Keys.\u201d In one room, video documentation maps many of her earthworks series\u2014small monuments alongside roadways that mark space and can easily go unnoticed.<\/p>\n \n\tAnother guide of this exhibition is Marcel Duchamp,<\/strong> whose innovations like the readymade are framed as a practice that understands the art world as a machine to be subverted via \u201cworks that lodge themselves inside this machine, dripping glue into its gears,\u201d per a wall text. (A catalog essay by Elena Filipovic explores the artistic affinities between Samb and Duchamp and their interest in the margins.) On view is\u00a0Bo\u00eete-en-valise<\/em>, showing his most famous works at miniature, portable scale. Duchamp\u2019s influence on the art of the past century is undeniable, and many of the artists here offer work that stands within that legacy. Installed above\u00a0Bo\u00eete-en-valise<\/em>\u00a0is a photograph by Akinbode Akinbiyi <\/strong>showing a pile of urban detritus in Berlin, including a discarded toilet that reads \u201cFuck Duchamp.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSamb, Buchanan, and Duchamp provide the seeds for this exhibition, an important metaphor that recurs throughout Kouoh\u2019s exhibition. Spread across both venues is a section named \u201cThe Schools\u201d that focuses on highlighting the contributions of artist-run spaces that have, in the past two decades or so, nurtured multiple generations of artists. Installations by groups like Denniston Hill <\/strong>in Upstate New York, Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation<\/strong> in Lagos, blaxTARLINES<\/strong> in Ghana, and the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute (NCAI)<\/strong> are chaotic and multifaceted, showing many ways of art-making.<\/p>\n \n\tIn this same vein, Guadalupe Rosales <\/strong>presents an installation that organizes slivers of the vast community-built archive she has assembled over the past decade to visualize the beauty of L.A.\u2019s Latinx community. Projected onto three sets of vertical blinds is\u00a0Retiro<\/em>\u00a0(2019), a series of video interviews in which Natalia Lassalle-Morillo<\/strong> interviews her mother and collaborator Gloria Maria Morillo<\/strong>, who rewrites her personal history in real time. Guadalupe Maravilla <\/strong>collects the material trace of migration, adding found objects that retrace his own childhood migration to the U.S. from El Salvador, and assembles them into his \u201cDisease Throwers\u201d sculptures, which he describes as \u201cboth shrines and healing instruments.\u201d The gaps in the archive are rendered beautiful and to be respected by holding space for this lacuna, in works like the \u201cObservatorio de Lagunas\u201d series by Sof\u00eda Gallis\u00e1 Muriente<\/strong>. One entry,\u00a0Guaniquilla luminosa \/ Luminous Guaniquilla<\/em>\u00a0(2023), features digitized blue-ish Super 8 footage of an inlet in Puerto Rico\u2019s Cabo Rojo that has been taken to the point of abstraction.<\/p>\n \n\tOne of the exhibition\u2019s most poignant works is Avi Mograbi<\/strong>\u2018s installation\u00a0Between a River and a Sea<\/em>\u00a0(2026), which on one screen shows business directories from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria from 1938, while facing it we see Mograbi scroll through an online version of the Yellow Pages for Gaza from 2023. The first era precedes the creation of the state of Israel, while the second comes just before Israel\u2019s destruction of Gaza after October 7. Life and the businesses that sustain it have been irreparably damaged by these conflicts, 80 years apart. Walid Raad<\/strong>, whose work has long questioned the objectiveness of archives by creating fictional and speculative ones of his own, presents two powerful installations that challenge viewers to figure out if what is in front of us is fact or fiction. At the Giardini are 11 photographs that allegedly show some of the beds where Yasser Arafat, the deceased leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, slept. Arafat famously never slept more than two nights in a row in the same place. Back at the Arsenale is a set of palettes featuring copies of missing artworks that hadn\u2019t been seen in decades; the palettes had been shipped from Lebanon, following the end of its civil war in 1990, to different Yugoslav countries as they were preparing for their own wars. \u201cOne war ends, another begins. The weapons moved easily from one battlefield to the next,\u201d Raad reminds us in a wall text.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n \n\tAs \u201cIn Minor Keys\u201d implies, listening to \u201cthe quiet tones, the lower frequencies, the hums, the consolations of poetry, all portals of improvisation to the elsewhere and the otherwise,\u201d as Kouoh puts it in her essay, is essential to life in our current world. The sonic plays an essential role in the show, with sound pieces by Pauline Oliveros <\/strong>and Laurie Anderson<\/strong> asking viewers to don headphones, close their eyes, and listen to the compositions and narration, respectively, by these artists. Cauleen Smith<\/strong>\u2018s\u00a0The Wanda Coleman Songbook<\/em>\u00a0immerses us in the sights, sounds, and vibes of Los Angeles through the lens of poet Wanda Coleman. At the center entry room of the Central Pavilion stand two beadwork costumes by Big Chief Demond Melancon<\/strong>, honoring the vibrancy of the New Orleans Black Masking Indians traditions and the movement and joy they inspire as they process during Mardi Gras.<\/p>\n \n\tIn her essay, Kouoh cites James Baldwin: \u201cThere is a reason, after all, that some people wish to colonize the moon, and others dance before it as an ancient friend.\u201d That is best exemplified in the installation in the Arsenale\u2019s Casetta Scaffali by Clarissa Herbst <\/strong>and Dominique Rust<\/strong>.\u00a0Parfumerie<\/em>\u00a0honors an underground gathering space in Zurich the two founded that served as a gathering place for artists; Kouoh worked the bar some nights. It\u2019s an impressionistic memory of the nights spent there on the dance floor, a much-needed respite. Throughout it all, \u201cIn Minor Keys\u201d reminds us that celebration is key to survival, resilience, endurance\u2014to recharge from the woes of one day to continue the fight and the struggle for the next day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/list\/art-news\/reviews\/venice-biennale-2026-review-themes-1234784370\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/venice-bienanle-26_1.jpg?w=1024″] To say that just one aspect of this Venice Biennale is unprecedented would be to understate all that circumstance has dealt this edition of the international art festival. While controversies surrounding several national pavilions\u2014Israel, Russia, the US, South Africa, and Australia, to name a few\u2014loom large, the unexpected death of the central […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1923437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1923437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1923437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1923437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1923437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Earth, Scarred<\/h2>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>Lineages and Archives<\/h2>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>We Must Never Forget to Dance<\/h2>\n
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