G.A.S. at Venice Biennale

Guest Artists Space Foundation will take part in the 2026 Venice Biennale’s main exhibition, placing a Lagos-founded art platform inside the show Koyo Kouoh conceived before her death. (guestartistsspace.com) La Biennale di Venezia says the 61st International Art Exhibition, titled *In Minor Keys*, will run from May 9 to November 22, 2026, with preview days on May 6, 7 and 8. The main exhibition spans the Giardini, the Arsenale and other Venice sites. (labiennale.org) Guest Artists Space Foundation said its project will be shown in the Arsenale as part of the central exhibition curated by Kouoh. The foundation announced its participation on April 11, 2026. (guestartistsspace.com) The Biennale is moving ahead with Kouoh’s exhibition plan after her death in May 2025. Organizers said they are carrying out the project with the support of her family and the team she selected, including Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira, Rasha Salti, Siddhartha Mitter and Rory Tsapayi. (labiennale.org) That makes this edition more than a calendar event for participating artists and institutions. It is also the first Venice Biennale to be realized posthumously from Kouoh’s completed curatorial framework, artist list, catalogue plan and exhibition design. (labiennale.org) The official Biennale site says the 2026 edition includes 111 invited participants in the international exhibition, alongside 99 national participations and 31 collateral events. Guest Artists Space Foundation enters that larger field as an artist-led organization rather than a national pavilion. (labiennale.org) At the same time, the Biennale is facing a separate fight over Russia’s planned return to the national pavilions. Artnet reported on March 11 that the European Union warned the exhibition’s 2 million euro grant could be suspended if a Russian pavilion gave a platform to figures tied to the Kremlin during the war in Ukraine. (news.artnet.com) Ukraine escalated that dispute on April 10, when its Culture Ministry said President Volodymyr Zelensky had enacted sanctions against five people involved in organizing or participating in the Russian pavilion. The ministry said the measures were adopted under Presidential Decree No. 305/2026, dated April 9, 2026. (mincult.gov.ua) ARTnews identified those sanctioned figures as commissioner Anastasia Karneeva, Russian cultural envoy Mikhail Shvydkoy, artist Valery Oleinik, architect Alexey Komov and musician Ilya Nikolaev. The Biennale told ARTnews in March that no sanctions had been broken and said in its March 4 pavilion announcement that it rejects “exclusion or censorship of culture and art.” (artnews.com) That tension is already shaping how artists talk about Venice. In an April 11 interview with *Observer*, Greek Pavilion artist Andreas Angelidakis described his own project as an “anti-fascist escape room,” underscoring how national representation and geopolitics are colliding before the Biennale has even opened. (observer.com) So the 2026 Biennale is arriving on two tracks at once: a major international exhibition built from Kouoh’s final plan, and a national-pavilion map increasingly defined by war, sanctions and funding pressure before the May 6 preview. (labiennale.org)