Biennale Arte 2026: performances, lectures, discussions, roundtables

Also featured an Assembly of artist- and collective-led organisations.

The final ten days of the 61st International Art Exhibition, In Minor Keys, by Koyo Kouoh, open up to dialogue: from Friday 13 ^th to Sunday 22 ^nd November, the spaces of the Arsenale will host a public programme of performances, lectures, debates, and roundtables, together with an Assembly bringing together ten artist-led organisations and collectives.

The programme includes a series of performances, some specially conceived for the occasion, by artists including Laurie Anderson, Ziad Antar, rana elnemr, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo & Sofiá Gallisá Muriente, Clarissa Herbst, Tammy Nguyen, Hagar Ophir, Yo-E Ryou, Dominique Rust, Lerato Shadi, and Nathalie Vairac.

The Assembly serves as a space to share ideas and creative practices, and to reflect on pedagogy, knowledge transmission, research, and the tending of land, body and community. The participating organizations come from capital cities, provincial centers and rural communities, and operate with vastly different goals, organizational structure, methods and sustainability models. Yet what binds them together is the role they’ve come to play for artists and cultural practitioners: places to connect, learn, and trade ideas, evolving alongside the changing art system while cultivating practices rooted in the ethos of listening, sharing and conviviality.

Koyo Kouoh established RAW Material Company in Dakar in this spirit, as a space for collaboration, learning and exchange. For In Minor Keys, Koyo Kouoh invited six such groups as participants in the Exhibition: Denniston Hill (Catskills); RAW Material Company (Dakar); GAS Foundation (Lagos/Ikiṣẹ); lugar a dudas (Cali); blaxTARLINES (Kumasi) and Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute - NCAI (Nairobi). Four further groups join these in the Assembly: Dar Jacir (Bethlehem); Fresh Milk (Barbados); Picha Collective (Lubumbashi); and Gudskul (Jakarta).

The programme accompanies Koyo Kouoh’s Biennale Arte 2026 towards its conclusion, while opening new conversations, connections and possibilities.

11:00 am, Sala d’Armi E
Discussion
Assembly – Day 1: Seeding Resilience (Part 1)
105’

This panel begins with the simple act of sowing seeds. What grows in the intention of planting and in tending the seedling’s growth? Across the world, artists, curators, writers, critics and educators have acted on the necessity to establish spaces that offer artists and cultural practitioners time and resources to convene, collaborate, slow down or simply rest. These are also ‘seeds’: ideas that are planted and propagated. Each of the organisations discuss a ‘seed’ project, followed by an open discussion across context, geography, demand and desire.

Speakers: Emily Jacir (Dar Jacir, Bethlehem), Megan Steinman (Denniston Hill, Catskills) and Haja Fanta (RAW Material Company, Dakar). Moderator: Noah Simblist (curator, writer and Associate Professor of Art, Virginia Commonwealth University).

4:30 pm, Tese dei Soppalchi
Performance by Tammy Nguyen
Timaeus and the Teacher: Foreword
45’

Timaeus and The Teacher: Foreword is an aria sung by a Vietnamese English teacher turned refugee while lost at sea. The performance unfolds within a panoramic tapestry designed by Nguyen and manipulated by a team of dancers. In the spirit of Nguyen’s approach to painting, an entire world emerges from this quilted ring, whose form references the diagram of the cosmos in Plato’s Timaeus. Synthesizing symbols and music associated with the maritime practice of ‘Flags of Convenience’, Timaeus considers what it means to search for national belonging in a world steadily shaped by the will of Nature.

Performers: Brian Vu, Lila Doromal, Rebecca Greenbaum-Goodhart, Karina Ikezoe, Herne Jean-Baptiste, Anne Later, Emily Pacilio, Brion Vann. Choreography: Jamal Jackson. Composition: Neely Bruce. Chorus and reed quintet (recorded): María Brea, Krysty Swann, Victor Khodadad, Libby Van Cleve, James Forgey, Julie Asuma Levene, John Mastroianni, TD Ellis, Anthony DeQuattro.

11:00 am, Sala d’Armi E
Lecture by Felwine Sarr
To Inhabit the World
60’

Felwine Sarr proposes new modes of inhabiting our world grounded in rethinking the conceptual frameworks of relationality (political, economic, epistemological) and of the imaginary as a central category in cultural renewal. In addition, Sarr invokes reconceptualizing the cosmopolitics of circulation and of hospitality, to redefine mobility on a global scale, and to shift from the societal and cultural imperative of hospitality to a right to mobility and a right to hospitality.

Speaker: Felwine Sarr. Introduction: Koyo Kouoh’s La Squadra.

2:00 pm, Sala d’Armi E
Discussion
Assembly – Day 2: Seeding Resilience (Part 2)
105’

This panel begins with the simple act of sowing seeds. What grows in the intention of planting and in tending the seedling’s growth? Across the world, artists, curators, writers, critics and educators have acted on the necessity to establish spaces that offer artists and cultural practitioners time and resources to convene, collaborate, slow down or simply rest. These are also ‘seeds’: ideas that are planted and propagated. Each of the organisations discuss a ‘seed’ project, followed by an open discussion across context, geography, demand and desire.

Speakers: Belinda Holden (GAS Foundation, Lagos/Ikiṣẹ, Yinka Shonibare Foundation, London); Annalee Davis (Fresh Milk, St. George, Barbados), Ericka Florez (lugar a dudas, Cali). Moderator: Wanda Nanibush (independent curator and community organiser).

3:00 pm, Artiglierie
Performance by Hagar Ophir
Report on a Séance: Bound with the Living, Gathering in Venice
60’

Hagar Ophir’s performative practice explores the séance as a research method. During the opening week of the Biennale Arte, the artist invited nine experts to gather around a Ouija board to inquire collectively about the untold histories of four objects: a skull, a silver rattle, a copper tray and a kite. Report on a Séance uses audio recordings and the protocols of the séance to return to what was conjured, and to contend with the silenced or forgotten histories received.

Performers: Miriam Schickler, Maya Avis, Hagar Ophir. Script and dramaturgy: Hagar Ophir, Juna Suleiman, Maya Avis. Sound composition: Miriam Schickler. Costume design: Antonia Eckardt. Translation: Sereen Dhamshi.

4:30 pm, Tese dei Soppalchi
Performance by Tammy Nguyen
Timaeus and the Teacher: Foreword
45’

Timaeus and The Teacher: Foreword is an aria sung by a Vietnamese English teacher turned refugee while lost at sea. The performance unfolds within a panoramic tapestry designed by Nguyen and manipulated by a team of dancers. In the spirit of Nguyen’s approach to painting, an entire world emerges from this quilted ring, whose form references the diagram of the cosmos in Plato’s Timaeus. Synthesizing symbols and music associated with the maritime practice of ‘Flags of Convenience’, Timaeus considers what it means to search for national belonging in a world steadily shaped by the will of Nature.

Performers: Brian Vu, Lila Doromal, Rebecca Greenbaum-Goodhart, Karina Ikezoe, Herne Jean-Baptiste, Anne Later, Emily Pacilio, Brion Vann. Choreography: Jamal Jackson. Composition: Neely Bruce. Chorus and reed quintet (recorded): María Brea, Krysty Swann, Victor Khodadad, Libby Van Cleve, James Forgey, Julie Asuma Levene, John Mastroianni, TD Ellis, Anthony DeQuattro.

11:00 am, Sala d’Armi E
Roundtable
Saudade: A Roundtable
100’

In Minor Keys pays tribute to Issa Samb (1945-2017) and Beverly Buchanan (1940-2015), incandescent worldmakers who employed often fugitive methods. This session expands the frame to other artists in the Exhibition who are no longer living: Nancy Brooks Brody (1962-2023), Seyni Awa Camara (1945-2026) and Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016). It addresses the unstable meanings of legacy, the alchemy of juxtaposition with contemporary practices, and more emotionally, the idea of an absent presence.

Speakers: Patricia Ekpo (Assistant Professor of African American and African Diaspora Art, Cornell University), Océane Harati (Director of OH Gallery, Dakar), Sarah Shin (curator, writer, Co-Director of Silver Press, London) and Jo-ey Tang (artist, curator and author). Moderation and introduction: Siddhartha Mitter.

2:30 pm, Sala d’Armi E
Discussion
Assembly – Day 3: Epistemic Disobedience
175’

This panel expands out from a publication: The Ideal Library, edited by Koyo Kouoh and Nana Oforiatta Ayim in 2012, and expansively revisited in RAW Material Company’s project Ideal Seeds for Fertile Grounds in the Stirling Pavilion, Giardini. This slim volume manifested a collectively compiled library of books, writings and songs. This session builds on this epistemic act, inviting four organisations to discuss their philosophy and practice of pedagogy and knowledge transmission.

Speakers: Bukonola Ngobi (Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute, Nairobi), Jean-Sylvain Tshilumba Mukendi (Picha Collective, Lubumbashi), farid rakun (Gudskul, Jakarta), Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh (blaxTARLINES, Kumasi). Moderator: Tandazani Dhlakama (Curator of Global Africa, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto).

3:00 pm, Artiglierie
Performance by Hagar Ophir
Report on a Séance: Bound with the Living, Gathering in Venice
60’

Hagar Ophir’s performative practice explores the séance as a research method. During the opening week of the Biennale Arte, the artist invited nine experts to gather around a Ouija board to inquire collectively about the untold histories of four objects: a skull, a silver rattle, a copper tray and a kite. Report on a Séance uses audio recordings and the protocols of the séance to return to what was conjured, and to contend with the silenced or forgotten histories received.

Performers: Miriam Schickler, Maya Avis, Hagar Ophir. Script and dramaturgy: Hagar Ophir, Juna Suleiman, Maya Avis. Sound composition: Miriam Schickler. Costume design: Antonia Eckardt. Translation: Sereen Dhamshi.

3:30 pm, Teatro Piccolo Arsenale
Performance by Natalia Lassalle-Morillo and Sofiá Gallisá Muriente
Tactics of Transmission
90’

Acting as unruly colonial subjects, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo and Sofía Gallisá Muriente infiltrate the imperial archive namely two collections of Puerto Rican cultural artifacts at the Smithsonian Institution to question the logics of dis/possession and preservation that permeate museums across the world. Presented in collaboration with Alexandra Buschman-Román, Tactics of Transmission offers a strategy to reconnect historical materials held in these vaults to the people and places they belong to, deploying storytelling, images and sound as forms of restitution. Tactics of Transmission is presented in tandem with the participation of the artists in In Minor Keys.

Writers, Directors and Transmitters: Sofía Gallisá Muriente, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo. Composer and Musical Performer: Alexandra Buschman-Román. Assistant Director: Pelé Sánchez Tormes. Videos: Sofía Gallisá Muriente, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo. Objects by: Amara Abdal Figueroa, Rocío Cáliz-Padilla, Richard Cameron, Pedro Pablo Rinaldi Jovet. Costume Designer: Cristina Agostini Fitch.

11:00 am, Teatro Piccolo Arsenale
Performance by Natalia Lassalle-Morillo and Sofiá Gallisá Muriente
Tactics of Transmission
90’

Acting as unruly colonial subjects, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo and Sofía Gallisà Muriente infiltrate the imperial archive namely two collections of Puerto Rican cultural artifacts at the Smithsonian Institution to question the logics of dis/possession and preservation that permeate museums across the world. Presented in collaboration with Alexandra Buschman-Román, Tactics of Transmission offers a strategy to reconnect historical materials held in these vaults to the people and places they belong to, deploying storytelling, images and sound as forms of restitution. Tactics of Transmission is presented in tandem with the participation of the artists in In Minor Keys.

Writers, Directors and Transmitters: Sofía Gallisá Muriente, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo.

Composer and Musical Performer: Alexandra Buschman-Román. Assistant Director: Pelé Sánchez Tormes. Videos: Sofía Gallisá Muriente, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo. Objects by: Amara Abdal Figueroa, Rocío Cáliz-Padilla, Richard Cameron, Pedro Pablo Rinaldi Jovet. Costume Designer: Cristina Agostini Fitch.

2:00 pm, Sala d’Armi E
Performance by Clarissa Herbst and Dominique Rust
Whiteout
45’

This performance deploys the Duchampian concept of the ‘inframince’ to explore boundary states between bodies, cultural entities and moments in time. Dominique Rust and Clarissa Herbst, along with Michael Wolf, have worked together for many years on performance projects that are partly scripted and improvised. Whiteout was developed in the context of Rust and Herbst’s project for In Minor Keys at Casetta Scaffali, located in the Arsenale. Their installation revisits Parfumerie, an artist-led urban experiment that took place in Zurich in the late 1980s. A patchwork of mostly illegal, ad hoc parties and club nights, Parfumerie carved out a space for collective joy.

Performers: Dominique Rust, Michael Wolf. Scenography and Video: Clarissa Herbst. Music Composition: Martin Schütz.

4:00 pm, Tese dei Soppalchi
Performance by Ziad Antar
Bladder Diplomacy
80’

Threading stories of international diplomacy and the cultivation of potatoes and tomatoes in the eastern Mediterranean with personal family stories, Bladder Diplomacy explores radical interventions in the natural environment and the nutritional habits sowed in these lands by modernization and globalized agribusiness, examining their consequences and the remarkable resilience of native seeds. Lebanese artists Ziad Antar, Hatem Imam and Nayla Mabsout collaborate in this lecture performance to draw a satirical puzzle of malicious weeds and civil wars.

Performers: Ziad Antar, Nayla Mabsout. Script: Ziad Antar. Director: Hatem Imam . Video: Nayla Mabsout.

11:00 am, Corderie dell’Arsenale
Performance by rana elnemr
The Newborn Birthchart
30’

Designed as an active threshold, rana elnemr’s the sugarcane choir two-part installation registers each visit, as a vibrational contribution to the work in space. Through readings, songs, incantations, and cues of the artwork’s card deck, the performance invites the audience to communally harvest the stories and songs of swamps, sugar canefields, resistance and yearnings. Gathering to witness invisible footprints and evanescent potentialities, the performance initiates in the fringe of a six-meter recycled plastic curtain featuring a sunken sun and a protruding moon: a constellation for what is yet to be born.

Performers: Maissa Alameldine, Mariamme Boctor, rana elnemr, Nour Kamel, Farida Rehab.

4:00 pm, Tese dei Soppalchi
Performance by Ziad Antar
Bladder Diplomacy
80’

Threading stories of international diplomacy and the cultivation of potatoes and tomatoes in the eastern Mediterranean with personal family stories, Bladder Diplomacy explores radical interventions in the natural environment and the nutritional habits sowed in these lands by modernization and globalized agribusiness, examining their consequences and the remarkable resilience of native seeds. Lebanese artists Ziad Antar, Hatem Imam and Nayla Mabsout collaborate in this lecture performance to draw a satirical puzzle of malicious weeds and civil wars.

Performers: Ziad Antar, Nayla Mabsout. Script: Ziad Antar. Director: Hatem Imam . Video: Nayla Mabsout.

11:30 am, Sala d’Armi E
Performance by Nathalie Vairac
Uppu
30’

Uppu is the Tamil word for salt a mineral essential to life; it is vital to our physiology and unites us in our shared humanity. To present a performance with salt—centered on salt and immersed in salt—means, for Nathalie Vairac, gazing at this infinite white mineral and giving it both space and a voice. It is a desire to learn from it and to fill the surrounding space with its resonance and the power of its vibration. It is about letting the salt that lives and vibrates within us shape our humanity. Performer: Nathalie Vairac.

4:00 pm, Teatro Piccolo Arsenale
Lecture by Bjørn Schaeffner
Another Switzerland: Club Culture and the Forging of a Liberal Society
80’

In the late 1980s, nightlife across urban Switzerland was tightly regulated; in Zurich, much of it was required by law to stop at midnight. Amid this drabness, another Switzerland was taking shape. DJs, activists, artists, insiders and outsiders turned basements and disused factories into improvised, illegal venues: testing grounds for a new urban culture. Prompted by Clarissa Herbst and Dominique Rust’s site-specific multimedia installation Parfumerie at Casetta Scaffali in the Arsenale, Bjørn Schaeffner’s lecture places Parfumerie within the wider history of Swiss club culture. It asks what its nightlife reveals about a changing Switzerland, and how it helped change the country in turn.

Speaker: Bjørn Schaeffner. Introduction and moderation: Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo.

2:00 pm and 5:00 pm, Corderie dell’Arsenale
Performance by Yo-E Ryou
Breath Orchestra: Score for Silence
35’

A series of live orchestrations that build on the artist’s audiovisual installation in the Arsenale. Performers gather through attentive acts of listening and breathing. Rooted in the artist’s hydrofeminist research and relationship with the Haenyeo community—women who continue the tradition of freediving to collect food from the sea, and whose embodied knowledge is increasingly at risk of disappearing—the work draws from moments of breath-holding and silence within underwater labour. Each performance unfolds as an act of transmission and collective learning through a workshop-performance model.

Performers: Young Sun Kong, Jiin Gook, Emy Mårtensson Liljegren, Kim Han Yeonji, Hearin Jeong, KkotShin Im, Suhwa Kim, Bitna Youn, Hayun Kim. Choreographic Advisor: Young Sun Kong. Sound Advisor: Jinsol Yu. Wearable Objects: Yumi Lee.

4:00 pm, Teatro Piccolo Arsenale
Lecture by Frieda Ekotto
Resilience Against Value: Authored Practices of Repair in Otobong Nkanga and Ibrahim Mahama
90’

This lecture looks at the gathering, wrapping, repairing and regenerating actions central to the practices of Otobong Nkanga and Ibrahim Mahama. These are processes that redirect materials, labor, and time toward the relationships between land, body, and community that extraction was designed to break. They form a kind of resilience that only makes sense once we see it as an act of refusal. By treating disobedience as the foundation of resilience, the lecture reframes both artists’ work as a sustained challenge to the value system that produces that damage pointing toward a model of authorship rooted in relation, not spectacle.

Speaker: Frieda Ekotto. Introduction and moderation: Rasha Salti.

11:00 am and 2:00 pm, Corderie dell’Arsenale
Performance by Yo-E Ryou
Breath Orchestra: Score for Silence
35’

A series of live orchestrations that build on the artist’s audiovisual installation in the Arsenale. Performers gather through attentive acts of listening and breathing. Rooted in the artist’s hydrofeminist research and relationship with the Haenyeo community—women who continue the tradition of freediving to collect food from the sea, and whose embodied knowledge is increasingly at risk of disappearing—the work draws from moments of breath-holding and silence within underwater labour. Each performance unfolds as an act of transmission and collective learning through a workshop-performance model.

Performers: Young Sun Kong, Jiin Gook, Emy Mårtensson Liljegren, Kim Han Yeonji, Hearin Jeong, KkotShin Im, Suhwa Kim, Bitna Youn, Hayun Kim. Choreographic Advisor: Young Sun Kong. Sound Advisor: Jinsol Yu. Wearable Objects: Yumi Lee.

12:00 pm (noon), Sala d’Armi E
Performance by Lerato Shadi
Unfolding
40’

Rooted in Lerato Shadi’s ongoing exploration of memory, visibility and collective processes, Unfolding is a quietly persistent reflection on how meaning is produced, preserved and transmitted across bodies and through time. The work unfolds through a group relay structure: participants move individually to the stage, wrap a stone with red wool and pass the transformed object to another participant, who continues the work. The act of wrapping becomes a gesture of protection and connection, while the passage of the stone from one participant to another evokes histories and forms of knowledge carried collectively.
Performers: Lerato Shadi, Camille Badirou, Trovania Dellile, Rebecca Pokua Korang, Viviana Medina.

4:00 pm, Teatro Piccolo Arsenale
Lecture by Tarek El-Ariss
Emptying the Jars of War, or How We Learned to Love Nature
90’

Crises and wars don’t just damage the environment: they unsettle how we think about nature itself. Beginning with scenes culled from the quotidian (like saving jars of water for bathing during wartime in Lebanon), the lecture moves through longer histories and mythologies of water and greenery, from the Garden of Eden to Greek and Islamic traditions, pausing on the oasis as a recurring fantasy. Environmental practices do not necessarily emerge from conscious ethical choices; often, they happen against our will, through habit, fear or the quest for survival. Sustainability is reframed as a negotiation interrogating the politics of purity and control, imagining alternative futures.

Speaker: Tarek El-Ariss. Introduction and moderation: Rasha Salti.

4 pm, Tese dei Soppalchi
Performance by Laurie Anderson
In This World
90’

In Minor Keys concludes with a solo performance by multidisciplinary artist Laurie Anderson, combining music, storytelling and video projection in a performative extension of her installations Notebook and All In Your Head, presented in the Arsenale as part of Biennale Arte 2026.

Performer: Laurie Anderson.

To attend the events, visitors must hold a valid admission ticket to Biennale Arte 2026, except for events taking place at Teatro Piccolo, which are free of charge until capacity is reached.

Biennale Arte 2026: open until Sunday 22 ^nd November, 2026
Public programme: from Friday 13 ^th to Sunday 22 ^nd November 2026, Arsenale di Venezia
For any updates on the programme, please check the official website of La Biennale di Venezia.

The 61 ^st International Art Exhibition was also made possible thanks to the support of Bvlgari, Exclusive Partner of the event.

Main Sponsor of the 61 ^st Exhibition is illycaffè.

Sponsors: American Express, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Vela-Venezia Unica, and Quattro Gatti Gin.

Rai is Media Partner of the 61 ^st International Art Exhibition and will follow the event with a dedicated offer on TV, radio and on the web.