Live arts '1922 Revisited' opens May 5

A live-arts program is opening in Venice before the 61st Venice Biennale officially starts, and the point is not just to add more events to preview week. “1922 Revisited,” presented by Third Space Art Foundation, runs May 5 to May 9, 2026, and it is built around a very specific historical wound — the 1922 Venice Biennale display of African sculpture. Instead of treating that archive like a sealed museum box, the program turns it into performance, film, and public discussion. That matters because Biennale week is when the global art world decides what counts, and this project is trying to push that conversation back onto the institution’s own history. (smb.bgdailynews.com) ### What is opening, exactly? This is a five-day live-arts program in Venice, not an official main exhibition section. Third Space Art Foundation says it will unfold across multiple venues, including Hotel Monaco and the European Cultural Centre’s (smb.bgdailynews.com)to 8, with the exhibition itself opening May 9. (smb.bgdailynews.com) ### Why does 1922 matter here? Because the program’s whole premise is that the Biennale was already shaping how African art got framed for European audiences a century ago. The 1922 exhibition of African sculpture drew works from Italian museum col(smb.bgdailynews.com)922 Revisited” is trying to make that framing visible instead of leaving it buried in institutional memory. (smb.bgdailynews.com) ### Why use performance instead of just an archive show? Because performance can argue with history in real time. The program description treats embodied practice as a method, not decoration — artists move between archive and action to test how old(smb.bgdailynews.com) diasporic knowledge. That makes the event feel less like a commemorative sidebar and more like a live critique. (smb.bgdailynews.com) ### Who is involved? The curator is Dr. Janine A. Sytsma. The artist list named so far includes Bernard Akoi-Jackson, ruby onyinyechi amanze, Jelili Atiku, Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi, Jermay Michael Gabriel, Tsedaye Makonnen, Wilfried Nakeu, Wura-Natash(smb.bgdailynews.com) with contemporary voices that are geographically and historically connected to what was being framed in 1922. (smb.bgdailynews.com) ### Is this part of a bigger Biennale mood? Yes — and that is part of why the program lands now. Biennale Arte 2026, titled *In Minor Keys*, opens May 9 and includes 100 national participations and 31 collateral events. This year’s edition is also (smb.bgdailynews.com)the Biennale’s own colonial archive fits that atmosphere almost too neatly. (labiennale.org) ### What does the archive angle add? It gives the project something sturdier than a vibe. La Biennale’s Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts — ASAC — holds records, photographs, publications, and institutional documents stretching back to 1895. So when “1922 Revisited” talks about a fragmented archive, that is not just metaphor. It is pointing at a real documentary system tha(labiennale.org)ings, and what kinds of language it used. The catch is that archives preserve power structures too. (labiennale.org) ### So what is the actual point? The point is not nostalgia. It is institutional self-interrogation during the most visible week of the international art calendar. “1922 Revisited” takes an old Biennale episode — one tied to colonial collecting and racialized display — and forces it back into the present as a live problem. If it works, people will not just leave having seen performa(labiennale.org)tle less innocently. (smb.bgdailynews.com)