The James Howell Foundation is proud to support In Minor Keys, the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, on view from May 9 to November 22, 2026, in Venice.
Curated by Koyo Kouoh, In Minor Keys brings together 110 participants—including individual artists, collaborative duos, collectives, and artist-led organizations—whose practices span a wide range of geographies and cultural contexts. The exhibition reflects Kouoh’s relational approach to curating, drawing connections across artistic practices through shared concerns, affinities, and resonances rather than fixed categories or national frameworks.
The exhibition has been realized by Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira, Rasha Salti, Siddhartha Mitter, and Rory Tsapayi in close collaboration with La Biennale di Venezia. Their work continues Kouoh’s vision with a focus on dialogue, collective process, and sustained engagement with artists.
In Minor Keys unfolds through a set of conceptual motifs that guide the exhibition’s structure rather than organizing works into discrete thematic sections. Among these are “Shrines,” which honor key artistic figures and expansive modes of worldmaking; “Processions,” inspired by carnival and collective movement, which activate space through participation; and “Schools,” which foreground artist-led models of knowledge production and community building. Additional strands explore rest, ecological and historical memory, and the role of art in fostering reflection and renewal.
Presented across the Giardini, the Arsenale, and additional venues throughout Venice, In Minor Keys extends to special projects in the city and on the mainland, as well as a robust educational program engaging universities, students, and the broader public. The accompanying two-volume catalogue foregrounds artists’ voices alongside newly commissioned critical and literary texts, reflecting the exhibition’s collaborative and cross-disciplinary ethos.
The James Howell Foundation is honored to support this ambitious and deeply resonant international exhibition.
La Biennale di Venezia was founded in 1895 and is now one of the most famous and prestigious cultural organizations in the world. La Biennale, who stands at the forefront of research and promotion of new contemporary art trends, organizes exhibitions and research in all its specific departments: Arts (1895), Architecture (1980), Cinema (1932), Dance (1999), Music (1930), and Theatre (1934). Its history is documented at the Historical Archives of Contemporary Arts (ASAC) that has been completely renovated in recent years.
Koyo Kouoh (1967-2025) was the founding Artistic Director of RAW Material Company, a center for art, knowledge and society in Dakar, Senegal, and since 2019, the Executive Director and Chief Curator of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town, South Africa. In 2024, she was appointed Curator of the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo is a London-based art historian, curator and researcher who works primarily on photography, performance and moving image. Using theoretical approaches to animate archival research, their writing and curatorial practice is driven by an interest in centering queer and trans artmaking, politics and social infrastructures, as well as visual and cultural histories of spatial and environmental justice.
Marie Hélène Pereira is a cultural practitioner and curator interested in histories of migrations and the politics of identity. She is currently Senior Curator (Performative Practices) at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany. Previously, she was Director of Programmes at RAW Material Company where she organized many exhibitions and related discursive programs, including the participation of RAW Material Company to “We face forward: Art from West Africa Today” Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; ICI Curatorial Hub at TEMP, New York; and The 9th Shanghai Biennial, Shanghai; MARKER Art Dubai (2013). She co-curated the 12th Berlin Biennale (2022); Canine Wisdom for the Barking Dog - The Dog Done Gone Deaf.
Rasha Salti is a curator and writer. She is presently an international programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival. From 2004 until 2010 she was the film programmer and creative director of ArteEast in New York. Her curated projects include: Mapping Subjectivity: Experimentation in Arab Cinema from the 1960s until Now (co-curated with Jytte Jensen), for the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2010–2012; 10th Sharjah Biennial (co-curated with Suzanne Cotter), Sharjah, 2011; and the retrospective of Syrian cinema The Road to Damascus (co-curated with Richard Peña), for the Film Society at Lincoln Center, 2006.
Siddhartha Mitter is a freelance writer and critic. He is interested in contemporary art and civic practices at the local, national, and international scale, with sustained interests in the African continent and in the American South. His work spans in-depth artist profiles in the studio, features, and reported essays, and criticism, notably on biennials and triennials. Based in New York but traveling widely, Siddhartha has contributed frequently to The New York Times since 2018; previously he wrote regularly for the Village Voice.
Rory Kahiya Tsapayi is a 2021 graduate in Journalism and Art History from Northwestern University. Raised in Zimbabwe and educated in the United States, their work is driven by a desire to connect twentieth-century Black histories on and off the continent through visual media, especially social documentary photography. Most recently, they explored anti-apartheid photography and magazine publishing in 1980s South Africa in a J. Carson Webster Prize-winning Honors Thesis in Art History. Having worked as a librarian at the Stony Island Arts Bank, a docent at the Block Museum of Art, and an arts and culture reporter at the Daily Maverick (Cape Town), Rory’s practices are archival, journalistic, educational, and artistic.