The Defining Themes of Today’s Biennial Art
An Artnet News analysis of 130 biennials from roughly 2022–2026 identifies a cohort of artists who appeared in nine or more editions, including Ali Eyal, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Carolina Caycedo, Kader Attia, Kapwani Kiwanga, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Raven Chacon, Tabita Rezaire, and Tuan Andrew Nguyen. The article notes that at least eight of these frequent biennial participants also appear in “In Minor Keys,” curated by the late South African curator Koyo Kouoh for the forthcoming 61st Venice Biennale. It characterizes a prevailing aesthetic as “post-colonial post-conceptualism,” often using museum-like display strategies to poetically reframe colonial histories and documents. Examples cited include Nolan Oswald Dennis’s g_arden for fanon (2021), which feeds pages of Frantz Fanon’s 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth to earthworms, and Kapwani Kiwanga’s Flowers for Africa (2013–ongoing), recreations of floral arrangements from African liberation ceremonies that are allowed to wilt.
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This story was covered in Biennial Meltdown, Market Myths, and Museum Scandals