21 September 2026 · A reading of the curatorial texts for an ongoing exhibition
What would an exhibition ask of us if its first demand were to slow down? Before a work is classified, praised or turned into a photograph, there might be time to notice how we are encountering it.
Koyo Kouoh’s introduction to In Minor Keys begins with an invitation to attend to the body and its surroundings. The musical metaphor opens towards quieter forms of relation, artistic gathering and renewal. It makes room for joy and possibility alongside sorrow. This is a curatorial proposition about how an encounter might unfold, rather than a formula for what every artwork should mean.
The 61st Venice Art Biennale runs from 9 May to 22 November 2026. Following Kouoh’s death in May 2025, the Biennale continued her project with her family’s support. This piece reads the published framing; it is not an account of a visit or a judgement of the installation as experienced in person.
That distinction leaves a worthwhile subject. A curatorial text can be considered as an invitation: it directs attention, suggests a pace and establishes expectations. Readers can ask whether those expectations expand the ways a work can be encountered, or begin to decide the encounter in advance.
The accompanying team text gives the invitation a material setting. It describes planning at RAW Material Company in Dakar and identifies artist-centred institution building among the exhibition’s concerns. These details suggest an interpretive route beyond treating “minor” as simply a quieter aesthetic. They direct attention towards the places and relationships in which artistic possibilities are developed.
An AE reading would pursue that route through a specific question: what enables someone to attend differently? Time, a place to pause, accessible interpretation and permission to remain uncertain might all matter. Their significance would have to be investigated in the actual exhibition. An eloquent statement cannot establish how evenly those opportunities are available.
There is a productive tension here. Institutions can invite visitors to slow down while also needing to move large numbers through their spaces. A visitor might find an unexpected opening within those conditions; another might feel hurried or excluded. Neither response can be inferred from the curatorial statement alone.
Nor should every work be required to comfort or renew us. Art may disturb the very expectations with which we arrive. The test of a generous curatorial invitation is partly whether it leaves room for that refusal. A minor key can be an opening to listen, without determining in advance what we will hear.
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