REVIEW I Listen rather than declare

Venice is a city suspended between reality and imagination, making it the perfect setting for La Biennale di Venezia Arte, 2026. Contemporary art is woven into the fabric of the city, extending beyond the Giardini and Arsenale into palazzos, churches, hidden courtyards and unexpected corners. It is exhilarating, overwhelming and impossible to escape. As Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) observed, “The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.” Here, that intensity permeates the city, transforming Venice into a living artwork.

Installation view: Khaled Sabsabi conference of one’s self, 2026, eight-channel HD video installation with audio, 8 acrylic paintings on canvas, 2 embroidery textile works, 54 mins, site specific surround wall stencils. Australia Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia, 2026. Photographed by Andrea Rossetti.

This year’s Biennale arrives under more complex circumstances than most. It is shaped by the profound loss of its curator, Koyo Kouoh (1967–2025), whose exhibition In Minor Keys, 2026, was realised posthumously by the team she assembled, and by a wider climate of conflict and division. Against this backdrop, its invitation to slow down and listen feels both timely and necessary.

The Biennale centres on two interconnected sites: the Arsenale, once the heart of Venice’s maritime power, now houses In Minor Keys, while the leafy Giardini is home to the National Pavilions. Hundreds more exhibitions and satellite events extend across the city.

Installation view (detail): Khaled Sabsabi, conference of one’s self, 2026, eight-channel HD video installation with audio, 8 acrylic paintings on canvas, 2 embroidery textile works, 54 mins, site specific surround wall stencils. Australia Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia, 2026. Photographed by Andrea Rossetti.

My first stop is the Australian Pavilion presenting conference of one’s self, 2026, by Khaled Sabsabi, curated by Michael Dagostino.

From a distance, the pavilion looks like a black monolith, enigmatic and self-contained. Unlike the familiar white cube aesthetic of contemporary art spaces, its dark minimalist exterior offers few clues as to what waits within.

A hive of elegantly dressed people gathers outside the pavilion, a palpable energy hanging in the air. As I step through two suspended textile banners that stand like guardians at the entrance, the noise and bustle begin to dissolve, a quiet transition into a space of contemplation.

Installation view: Khaled Sabsabi, conference of one’s self, 2026, eight-channel HD video installation with audio, 8 acrylic paintings on canvas, 2 embroidery textile works, 54 mins, site specific surround wall stencils. Australia Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia, 2026. Photographed by Andrea Rossetti.

Entering the darkened space of conference of one’s self, I find eight large-scale canvases ringing the room in an octagon. Light spills from overhead, dissolving into the paint below until colour, texture and gesture seem to breathe on their own. The boundary between brushstroke and image blur across a fifty-four-minute cycle. People pause here to take selfies and portraits, the shifting light briefly folding them into the work itself.

The immersive environment creates a space for contemplation, encouraging meditation on the relationship between self and collective. Not everything sustains that quiet, however: the instinct to photograph yourself against the projections risks turning contemplation into content, and by the loop’s later minutes, the effect feels more decorative than revelatory. In his curatorial text, Dagostino frames the work as “a proposition towards an idea of a shared humanity,” shaped by migrant experiences, journeys and encounters. Speaking to the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) News, he described the process behind it more simply: “it’s always about testing ideas.”

Installation view (detail): Khaled Sabsabi, conference of one’s self, 2026, eight-channel HD video installation with audio, 8 acrylic paintings on canvas, 2 embroidery textile works, 54 mins, site specific surround wall stencils. Australia Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia, 2026. Photographed by Andrea Rossetti.

Moving through the pavilions, the contrast is striking. Where Sabsabi embraces quiet contemplation, Florentina Holzinger’s Seaworld Venice, 2026, in the Austrian Pavilion, declares itself loudly: part underwater theme park, part performance art, part dystopian fantasy, populated by naked women circling on jet skis, scaling a rotating pole and sitting submerged in glass tanks. It is a spectacle, exhilarating to witness, exhausting to sustain.

Elsewhere in the Giardini, a more playful, contemplative tone takes hold. Titled Grass Babies, Moon Babies, 2026, Japan’s Ei Arakawa-Nash fills his pavilion with baby dolls in sunglasses that visitors carry as they move through the space. Spain’s Oriol Vilanova turns decades of collected postcards into a quiet study of memory and repetition with Los restos, 2026, while Finland’s Jenna Sutela’s Aeolian Suite, 2026, offers a landscape of sound, movement and atmosphere. Britain takes a more traditional approach presenting Lubaina Himid’s colourful, surreal explorations of culture and identity titled Presenting History: Testing Translation, 2026.

The Arsenale follows, where 110 international artists present work in In Minor Keys. At the main entrance, I am greeted by Sabsabi’s khalil, 2026, setting the tone for the exhibition ahead. Kouoh’s decision to position the work at the threshold feels deeply significant: before the many voices that follow, you are invited to slow down and become fully present.

Installation view: Khaled Sabsabi, khalil, 2026, 8 channel HD video installation with audio, 40 x 2.8 metre acrylic paint, canvas, steel, black oud scent, 64 minutes. In Minor Keys, The Arsenale, La Biennale di Venezia, 2026. Photographed by Andrea Rossetti.

On entering the space, I encounter a scent, a smoky, rich fragrance of black oud acting as an invisible threshold. khalil is a large circular installation; you move anticlockwise through it, the act of walking becoming a contemplative journey, viewing turning into participation in a shared sensorial experience.

Bringing together video, scent and sound, the work draws on Sufi thought to trace how an inward life and an outward one might finally meet, its rolling forms shifting between abstraction and figuration to set a slower, more mindful pace. The title khalil derives from the Arabic word for “close friend,” a spirit of companionship woven throughout the work.

Sabsabi’s two works are in dialogue: while conference of one’s self echoes the outer self, khalil turns inward. Together, they engage spirituality, mysticism and philosophical inquiry, linking inner contemplation with outward expression. Sabsabi’s practice is distinguished by its quiet strength and formal elegance, creating spaces that invite connection and presence.

Sabsabi is the first Australian artist to simultaneously present work in both the Australian Pavilion and the main International Exhibition, a significant and rare achievement which speaks to the importance of his practice.

Installation view (detail): Khaled Sabsabi, khalil, 2026, 8 channel HD video installation with audio, 40 x 2.8 metre acrylic paint, canvas, steel, black oud scent, 64 minutes. In Minor Keys, The Arsenale, La Biennale di Venezia, 2026. Photographed by Andrea Rossetti.

Like Sabsabi’s, many of the strongest presentations in In Minor Keys reward stillness and attention. Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar’s The End of the World, 2023–2024, floods a cathedral-like room with red light, leading to a single small cube of cobalt, lithium, rare earths and other critical minerals—the unseen materials modern technology depends on, and the resource conflicts they quietly fuel. It is Kouoh’s own words, though, that best explain why restraint matters here: an invitation “to tune in sotto voce to the whispers, to the lower frequencies.”

Kouoh spoke of an intention to avoid spectacle in favour of quiet tones, the lower frequencies, ideas that resonate with Sabsabi and Dagostino. Minor keys, in music, carry intimacy and resistance where major keys carry triumph, a reminder that the most profound encounters are often the quietest.

La Biennale Arte 2026 reveals itself as what Siddhartha Mitter, part of Kouoh’s curatorial team, called “a collective score, composed with artists who have built universes of imagination,” an invitation to suspend time and remain open to quiet discovery. Under Kouoh’s curatorial vision, In Minor Keys asks us to listen rather than declare, to pay attention rather than seek resolution: a call to slow down and resist the pull of spectacle. Long after leaving Venice, it is this lingering sense of attentiveness that remains.

Installation view (detail): Khaled Sabsabi, khalil, 2026, 8 channel HD video installation with audio, 40 x 2.8 metre acrylic paint, canvas, steel, black oud scent, 64 minutes. In Minor Keys, The Arsenale, La Biennale di Venezia, 2026. Photographed by Andrea Rossetti.

Exhibitions
conference of one’s self
9 May – 22 November 2026
Australian Pavillion, Giardini della Biennale,
61^st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, curated by Michael Dagostino

khalil
9 May – 22 November 2026
Arsenale, 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venesia, Venice, In Minor keys, curated by Koyo Kouoh.

Khaled Sabsai – Between Suns
7 August – 20 September 2026
Vessel Contemporary, Fremantle, Western Australia.

Michelle Chanique is a Sydney curator and founder of Curated Contemporary.

Images courtesy of the artists; Milani Gallery, Brisbane; La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy; Creative Australia, Sydney; Andrea Rossetti; Anne Kučera; Saul Steed; Phillip George.

The article was first published in Artist Profile Issue 76, 2026.