The Venice Biennale has long learned to live with water, crowds and political storms. But this year the waves have reached the foundations of the exhibition itself. What was meant to be a grand ritual of contemporary art has become a test of whether culture can still claim autonomy while wars reshape the world around it.
The 61st International Art Exhibition opens under the title In Minor Keys. It was conceived by Koyo Kouoh, the first African woman appointed to curate the Biennale’s central exhibition. Her sudden death in 2025, shortly after a terminal cancer diagnosis, left her team not with a finished project, but with a map of intentions.
That changed the tone of the entire event. Instead of the usual anticipation of a defining curatorial gesture, Venice has received an exhibition that will inevitably read like an afterword. Every gallery carries the same question: is this truly Kouoh’s vision, or a reconstruction of her voice by colleagues trying to honor her memory while completing a vast institutional machine?
According to Daycom’s earlier analysis, this double absence makes the 2026 Biennale especially fragile. It does not begin with the certainty of a manifesto, but with an empty space at its center. And that space is quickly filled by politics, diplomacy, war and the struggle over who has the right to be represented.
Kouoh wanted to resist the direct spectacle of horror. Her concept invited audiences to listen to the world’s lower frequencies — voices that rarely occupy the center of global attention. Yet this year’s Venice shows that even the most delicate curatorial language cannot fully separate itself from states, armies, sanctions and tribunals.
The sharpest conflict surrounds Russia. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian pavilion effectively disappeared from the Biennale’s normal life. In 2022, it was closed after the artists themselves withdrew. In 2024, the space was rented to Bolivia. Russia’s return in 2026 has become a political rupture.
Formally, the Russian exhibition is framed as a project against exclusion and censorship. But in wartime, that language cannot be neutral. It turns the pavilion into an instrument of soft power, allowing an aggressor state to seek the status of an ordinary cultural participant without answering the central question: what does cultural presence mean beside destruction?
From Ukraine’s perspective, the issue is not merely an art-world dispute. Russia’s return is part of a wider information struggle. Culture does not disappear in such conditions, but it stops being innocent. A pavilion becomes not only a space for art, but also a site of legitimacy.
European institutions and the Italian government have found themselves in an uncomfortable bind. On one side stands the Biennale’s claim to artistic autonomy and its formal practice of admitting countries recognized by Italy. On the other stands the reality that Russia’s participation after years of war weakens the very language of European values used to justify Moscow’s isolation.
The collapse of the prize jury exposed that contradiction. The five-member panel resigned after a dispute over whether countries whose leaders are linked to investigations into crimes against humanity should be considered for awards. In that logic, the issue extended beyond Russia and reached Israel as well.
As a result, the Biennale lost one of its central rituals: the authoritative awarding of its major prizes. In place of the familiar system of Golden Lions, the event has shifted toward audience-voted popularity awards. That may sound democratic, but it also records a crisis. The institution could not preserve its own mechanism of judgment under the pressure of global conflict.
The Israeli pavilion enters this year’s Biennale with its own heavy political burden. After the previous edition, when the Israeli exhibition remained closed until a cease-fire and hostage-release agreement could be reached, this year’s participation is unfolding under pressure from activist groups demanding Israel’s exclusion over the war in Gaza.
This is no longer a debate about a single national pavilion. It is a conflict over the nature of cultural diplomacy itself. Countries use the Biennale to speak about themselves through art. But in wartime, that language no longer covers political reality. It either confronts reality honestly or becomes decoration.
The United States adds a different kind of crisis to the picture — less military than institutional. Its pavilion was shaped by delays, refusals and a departure from the usual independent review process. The country is being represented by sculptor Alma Allen, an artist with an unconventional biography and a comparatively limited presence in the American museum canon.
Allen’s selection could have been an interesting gesture on its own. A self-taught artist working in wood, stone and bronze can offer an alternative to the polished language of institutions. But the circumstances of his nomination — a newly formed organization, a commissioner without museum experience and the political setting of the Trump administration — turn the pavilion into a symbol of another question: how does a state manufacture the image of national greatness through art?
In an ordinary year, these stories might have remained separate. The death of a curator would have been a drama of legacy. Russia would have been a dispute over sanctions. Israel would have been a field of activism. The United States would have been an odd selection story. But 2026 compresses them into one nerve: who gets to speak on the world’s most visible art stage when the world itself is breaking into fronts?
That is why this Biennale matters beyond the art market, museums and curatorial circles. It shows that contemporary art can no longer pretend to be neutral ground. National pavilions have become diplomatic outposts. Artists carry the reputations of states. Visitors become participants in a moral vote, whether they want that role or not.
In that sense, Kouoh’s idea gains unexpected force. In Minor Keys may turn out not to be an escape from politics, but a way of hearing what is lost behind the loud language of governments: fatigue, grief, guilt, resistance, memory and the desire not to surrender art to propaganda.
Venice opens its season not as a flawless exhibition machine, but as a city where every pavilion stands on unstable ground. That is precisely what makes the 2026 Biennale important. It does not conceal the crisis of culture. It shows it at full scale — among canals, queues, protests and galleries where art is once again forced to answer for the world in which it exists.
