As the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia opens under the theme In Minor Keys, African and diasporic artists are already central to some of the most important conversations unfolding across the International Exhibition and national pavilions. From artists participating in Koyo Kouoh’s main exhibition to the powerful national presentations staged by African countries, Venice is once again becoming a site where African artistic practice is not peripheral, but deeply embedded in the language, politics and future of contemporary art.

Yet beyond the Giardini, the Arsenale and the official pavilion structure, another vital map of African and diasporic presence is taking shape across the city. These exhibitions, live art programmes, forums and independent presentations are unfolding in churches, palazzi, galleries, hotels, foundations and temporary spaces, creating a parallel rhythm of encounter, memory, repair and critical reflection. They show that some of the most urgent propositions in Venice are not only happening inside the Biennale’s formal architecture, but also in the off-site and independent spaces where artists, curators and institutions are testing new ways of gathering, listening, remembering and imagining otherwise.

1922 Revisited — Third Space Art Foundation

Dates: May 5–9, 2026, with additional performances planned for the fall
Locations: Hotel Monaco; European Cultural Centre, Marinaressa Gardens, Venice
Presented by: Third Space Art Foundation
In collaboration with: African Art in Venice Forum and European Cultural Centre
Artists include: Zora Snake, Jermay Michael Gabriel, Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi, Victoria-Idongesit Udondian, ruby onyinyechi amanze, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Jelili Atiku, Wilfried Nakeu and Tsedaye Makonnen

1922 Revisited is one of the most historically charged live art programmes taking place in Venice during the opening week of the Biennale. Curated as a response to a little-discussed episode in the Biennale’s own history, the project returns to 1922, when the Biennale presented a special exhibition of thirty-three African sculptures. The surviving archive includes an introductory text by Italian curator Carlo Anti and a single black-and-white photograph of a sculpture by a Luba artist, staged against a stark white background.

That archive reveals a familiar colonial contradiction. While the 1922 text acknowledged the artistic force of African sculpture, describing it as evidence of “absolute ingenuity,” it also framed the works through the derogatory language of primitivism. 1922 Revisited asks contemporary artists to mine this fragmented archive, confront the imperial logic embedded in the Biennale’s history, and bring forward epistemologies rooted in African thought, performance, embodiment and memory.

Unfolding across Venice through a series of live performances, the programme becomes a space of return and repair. It does not simply revisit the past as documentation; it reanimates it in the present. In dialogue with Koyo Kouoh’s curatorial vision for In Minor Keys, 1922 Revisited positions performance as a method of historical reckoning, allowing long-silenced voices to move through the city again with urgency, poetry and force.

Resonance — Fondazione Giorgio e Armanda Marchesani

Dates: May 10 – July 10, 2026
Opening programme: A Gathering in the Key of Resonance, May 10
Location: Fondazione Giorgio e Armanda Marchesani, Dorsoduro, Venice
Presented through: Vanderbilt University’s Engine for Art, Democracy and Justice
Founded by: María Magdalena Campos-Pons
Curated by: Grace Aneiza Ali and Selene Wendt
Key participants include: María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Kamaal Malak, Deborah Willis, Naiza Khan, Georges Adéagbo, Aïda Muluneh, Olu Oguibe, Dawit Petros, Carrie Mae Weems, Christopher Cozier, Frank Bowling and many others

Resonance brings together exhibition-making, public programming and sonic listening sessions in a project grounded in listening, exchange and encounter. Led by renowned artist and MacArthur Fellow María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Kamaal Malak, multigenre bassist, composer, audio architect and member of Grammy Award-winning Arrested Development, the project opens on May 10 at Fondazione Giorgio e Armanda Marchesani.

Presented through Vanderbilt University’s Engine for Art, Democracy and Justice, Resonance continues the platform’s mission to gather artists and thinkers from the Global Souths. Its curatorial framework, developed by Grace Aneiza Ali and Selene Wendt, brings together artists and scholars across geographies and generations, creating what the organisers describe as a space of solidarity, conviviality and sustained listening.

The exhibition includes artists from 15 countries across five continents and spans eight decades of practice. It honours artists in memoriam, including Alicia Henry and Augustín Drake Aldama, while also presenting major figures such as Frank Bowling, Aïda Muluneh, Olu Oguibe, Dawit Petros, Carrie Mae Weems, Christopher Cozier, Naiza Khan and Georges Adéagbo. The May 10 opening programme, A Gathering in the Key of Resonance, features conversations, screenings and sonic sessions, including contributions from Deborah Willis, Naiza Khan, Georges Adéagbo and LeXander Bryant.

Hassan Hajjaj: Venice, 1447

Dates: May 5 – June 27, 2026
Location: 193 Gallery, Salizada San Samuele, 3337, 30124 Venezia VE, Italy
Artist: Hassan Hajjaj
Presented by: 193 Gallery

At 193 Gallery’s Venice space, Moroccan artist Hassan Hajjaj presents Venice, 1447, his second exhibition with the gallery in the city. The title refers to the Hijri calendar, with the year 1447 corresponding to the present year in the Islamic lunar calendar. This dual sense of time is central to Hajjaj’s practice, as his works often carry both Hijri and Gregorian dates, reflecting his movement across cultural systems, visual languages and temporal frameworks.

The exhibition brings together some of Hajjaj’s most recognisable works: vibrant portraits framed with plastic mats, motorbike tyres and everyday consumer goods, including harissa cans. His subjects appear in dynamic poses, often dressed in garments designed by the artist himself, merging Moroccan visual culture with contemporary streetwear, studio portraiture and popular culture.

Coinciding with the opening of the Biennale and resonating with In Minor Keys, Venice, 1447 offers a playful yet politically layered reflection on postcolonial identity, cultural fluidity and representation. Hajjaj’s work resists the heaviness often attached to identity-based discourse, choosing instead humour, colour, generosity and subversion as tools for challenging stereotypes and celebrating self-fashioning.

Soul Frequencies

Dates: May 5 – June 27, 2026
Location: 193 Gallery, Salizada San Samuele, 3337, 30124 Venezia VE, Italy
Artists: Adler Guerrier, Christa David, Hyacinthe Ouattara, Joana Choumali, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou, Modou Dieng Yacine, Roxane Mbanga, Shourouk Rhaiem and Thandiwe Muriu
Presented by: 193 Gallery

Also at 193 Gallery, Soul Frequencies brings together nine artists from Africa and its diasporas in an exhibition shaped by sound, memory, rhythm and Black musical traditions. Drawing directly from Koyo Kouoh’s curatorial language for In Minor Keys, the exhibition treats jazz, blues, soul and Black music not simply as genres, but as spaces of circulation, resistance, liberation and shared memory.

The exhibition moves through music as archive, ancestry and community. Modou Dieng Yacine reactivates archival images of dances in Saint-Louis through colour, while Shourouk Rhaiem transforms record sleeves into intimate and spiritual objects. Thandiwe Muriu’s images foreground women and the transmission of knowledge in Kenyan society, while Mehdi-Georges Lahlou’s sculptures use the palm tree as a metaphor for migration, resilience and continuity.

Across the exhibition, works by Christa David, Hyacinthe Ouattara, Roxane Mbanga, Joana Choumali and Adler Guerrier extend the conversation into prayer, fabric, embroidery, urban gardens and collective memory. Together, Soul Frequencies becomes a sensitive cartography of vibration, where art operates like music: carrying memory, holding pain, producing community and opening space for transcendence.

Elegy — Gabrielle Goliath

Dates: May 5 – July 31, 2026
Location: Chiesa di Sant’Antonin, Castello, Venice
Artist: Gabrielle Goliath
Supported by: Bertha Foundation, Ibraaz, Galleria Raffaella Cortese and Friends of Elegy

South African artist Gabrielle Goliath presents Elegy as an independent exhibition at Chiesa di Sant’Antonin in Castello. The presentation arrives in the aftermath of the cancellation of the South African Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition, making its presence in Venice especially resonant. Rather than retreating from that rupture, Elegy emerges as a radical act of hope, solidarity and community-care.

The work is conceived as a sacred chamber of mourning, gathering and repair. It honours lives including Heba Abunada, Ipeleng Christine Moholane and two Nama women ancestors, holding grief as both wound and medicine. The exhibition asks what it means to mourn when mourning itself is under threat, and how sound, breath and collective presence can create space for dignity and remembrance.

Following Venice, Elegy will travel to Ibraaz in London in October 2026, where it will be accompanied by a catalogue launch and a community-driven “curriculum of shared breath.” In Venice, the work stands as one of the most emotionally and politically urgent independent presentations of the season.

Ibrahim Mahama: A Shea Garden

Dates: May 4 – July 18, 2026
Location: Rio Terà de la Carità 1046, Dorsoduro, Venice
Vaporetto stop: Accademia
Artist: Ibrahim Mahama
Presented by: Galleria Barovier&Toso in collaboration with APALAZZOGALLERY

Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama presents A Shea Garden, a collaboration between Galleria Barovier&Toso and APALAZZOGALLERY. Installed in a compact, low-ceilinged space stripped of its doors and windows, the work is viewed from outside through open frames, transforming the architecture itself into part of the installation.

The floor is covered with broken terracotta, from which intact vessels emerge like flowers. These objects originate from northern Ghana and include containers historically used for grain and other goods, alongside spherical forms pierced with holes and used as chicken feeders. Mahama translates these forms into transparent Murano glass, creating a dialogue between the density of Ghanaian terracotta and the luminous fragility of Venetian glassmaking.

The title anchors the work in the dry savannah of northern Ghana, where the shea tree has sustained communities for generations. Shea harvesting and processing have long been women’s work, carrying knowledge through labour, song, trade and care. By framing the installation as a garden, Mahama points to forms of knowledge that must be cultivated to survive. The adjacent gallery includes drawings and Polaroids made specifically for the project, extending the installation into a conversation between Ghanaian material culture and Murano glass traditions—two ancient practices facing the pressures of erasure.

Faces and Phases 20 — Zanele Muholi

Dates: May 6–9, 2026
Opening: May 5, by invitation only
Open daily: May 6–9, 11am–4pm
Location: Castello 6282, Fondamenta dei Felzi, Venice
Artist: Zanele Muholi

Visual activist and 2026 Hasselblad Award laureate Zanele Muholi presents Faces and Phases 20, an independent exhibition and city-wide activation marking 20 years of the artist’s seminal photographic series. Bringing together more than 200 portraits from 2006 to the present, the project forms a powerful cumulative archive of Black LGBTQIA+ lives across time, geography and community.

Faces and Phases has long operated as both art and activism, insisting on visibility, dignity and self-representation against systems of erasure and violence. In Venice, the twentieth-anniversary presentation extends beyond the exhibition space into the city through activations scheduled from May 6 to 10.

One of the key components is a mobile pop-up studio inspired by the legacy of 1950s and 1960s West African studio photographers such as Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keïta. Through this gesture, Muholi connects portraiture to community, memory and self-fashioning, making Venice not only a site of display but also a site of image-making and encounter.

Amoako Boafo: It Doesn’t Have to Always Make Sense

Dates: May 6 – November 22, 2026
Location: Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Venice
Artist: Amoako Boafo
Presented in collaboration with: Gagosian

Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo presents It Doesn’t Have to Always Make Sense at Museo di Palazzo Grimani, marking his first solo exhibition in Italy. Opening immediately before the commencement of the 61st Biennale di Venezia, the exhibition features new and recent works, many of which respond directly to the architecture, atmosphere and historical context of the museum.

Installed on the second floor of the palazzo, Boafo’s works enter into dialogue with the Renaissance environment of Palazzo Grimani, part of the Musei archeologici nazionali di Venezia e della Laguna. The presentation places contemporary Black portraiture within a space deeply associated with Venetian artistic history, creating a striking encounter between Boafo’s expressive language and the legacy of European masterworks.

Boafo’s practice continues to explore identity, style, gesture and presence. In Venice, his figures occupy a historical site that was not built with them in mind, asserting a contemporary visual language that is intimate, self-possessed and expansive. The exhibition becomes not only a major moment for the artist, but also a meaningful intervention into how Black representation enters and reshapes historic European spaces.

African Art in Venice Forum 2026: Beyond Visibility — A Method of Inquiry

Dates: May 5–6, 2026
Location: Hotel Monaco & Grand Canal, San Marco 1332, Venice
Presented by: African Art Dialogues and Strauss & Co
In collaboration with: Smithsonian National Museum of African Art
Theme: Beyond Visibility: A Method of Inquiry

The African Art in Venice Forum returns in 2026 with the theme Beyond Visibility: A Method of Inquiry. Taking place at Hotel Monaco & Grand Canal, the two-day programme brings together artists, curators, scholars, collectors and cultural leaders for a series of conversations during one of the most important weeks in the global art calendar.

The forum moves beyond the question of visibility alone, asking what comes after representation. Its panels focus on queer histories, cultural geographies and the future of African art infrastructure, creating space for deeper inquiry into the systems, networks and intellectual frameworks shaping African art globally.

Presented by African Art Dialogues and Strauss & Co in collaboration with the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, the forum functions as a critical convening space. While exhibitions across Venice show the work, AAVF gathers the voices, methods and debates that help shape how African and diasporic art is discussed, supported and sustained.

A Wider Citywide Conversation

Taken together, these projects reveal a Venice where African and diasporic presence cannot be contained by the official structure of the Biennale alone. They move across performance, sound, portraiture, painting, sculpture, public dialogue, historical repair and sonic gathering. They occupy churches, palazzi, galleries, gardens, hotels and temporary spaces, transforming the city into a wider field of African and diasporic thought.

What makes these presentations significant is not only their number, but their range. Some return to colonial archives, others create spaces for mourning and repair. Some foreground music, spirituality and community, while others stage encounters between African material histories and Venetian craft traditions. Together, they suggest that Venice 2026 is not only a moment of representation, but a moment of method—of asking how African and diasporic artists, curators and institutions gather, remember, question and build.

Beyond the International Exhibition and national pavilions, these are the projects to follow closely. They are not side notes to the Biennale. They are part of the deeper rhythm of the city this season—where new narratives are being performed, sounded, assembled and carried forward.