Centuries of Endurance Undergird "In Minor Keys"

In Minor Keys at the 2026 Venice Biennale presents a posthumous, major exhibition that rejects Eurocentric ideas of Western art as the sole source of progress. The show includes strong representation of artists from Africa, the Caribbean, and their diasporas, featuring 111 international artists. It addresses white colonizers and confronts denial about events in Gaza through protest signs and solidarity statements. The exhibition frames the historically dispossessed as “wretched of the earth,” emphasizing endurance, melancholy, and riotous joy together. It aims to create calm centeredness and self-forgiveness, inviting emotional resonance even for viewers who do not identify with the historically disenfranchised.

"If you're Eurocentric by disposition, confident that the West is the single source of high art and ideas of progress, then don't visit Koyo Kouoh's exhibition In Minor Keys at the 2026 Venice Biennale. If you bristle at the mention of White colonizers, this show is not for you, though it might be partly about you. Moreover, if you're convinced that what's happened in Gaza over the last three years looks nothing like a genocide, you're in for boatloads of protest signs and solidarity statements that tell you just how dead wrong you are."

"This posthumous exhibition, the crown jewel of a historic biennale, is a triumph of the historically dispossessed and overlooked, the proud and beautiful "wretched of the earth." It's a solid hymn to the billions who carry melancholy and riotous joy in the same heart. Those with a generational short fuse but endless endurance. Those who swim in grief, but throw the best parties."

"Call them the Global South, or Global Majority. Call them Black and Brown people. Call them the "developing world." Call them whatever you want. If you count yourself among them, you'll get what this exhibition tries to achieve with a snap of the fingers. But you don't have to be one of the historically disenfranchised to let your heart fill up with its soulful hums."

"In Minor Keys boasts work by 111 international artists with a strong, perhaps unprecedented, representation of artists from Africa, the Caribbean, and their diasporas. Ever so tenderly, the show strums the chords of the heart, leaving a gentle, lasting resonance. It's an exhibition informed by poe"

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