The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia , titeld In Minor Keys by Koyo Kouoh, features 31 Collateral Events as part of the Official Program of Biennale Arte 2026, located around the city of Venice. Here below, The PhotoPhore’s selection of must-see.
Collateral Events to see, selected by The PhotoPhore
If All Time Is Eternally Present: Kandis Williams, Meriem Bennani & Orian Barki, Tai Shani
Presented by: Pier Luigi Nervi Foundation
Venue: Palazzo Nervi Scattolin, Campo Manin, San Marco 4866
9 maggio – 7 giugno
If All Time Is Eternally Present stages a nocturnal encounter between moving image, architecture, and public space on the façade of Palazzo Nervi Scattolin (1963 – 1972), transforming it into an urban exhibition device. The exhibition, supported by Bottega Veneta, inaugurates Building Dialogue, a new curatorial programme that extends the Pier Luigi Nervi Foundation research toward a dialogue with artistic practices, interpreting Nervi’s architecture as a speculative tool through which to interrogate the contemporary condition. In dialogue with the videoworks by Kandis Williams, Meriem Bennani & Orian Barki and Tai Shani, the façade amplifies the potential of projection as a form of public discourse-making, asserting the cultural agency of the ephemeral and opposing the monument-city with the values of impermanence. The exhibition’s title – an homage to T. S. Eliot – encapsulates the temporal coexistence of Nervi’s legacy and the contemporaneity of the works on display.
Kan Yasuda – Isole del Silenzio
Presented by: Fondation d’Entreprise Wilmotte
Corte Nuova, Fondamenta dell’Abbazia, Cannaregio 3560
9 maggio – 22 novembre
The exhibition unfolds as both a physical and contemplative experience, in which Yasuda creates a mineral garden—an inner landscape where silence, simplicity, and essentiality take shape through matter and space. Yasuda is renowned for his exceptional mastery in working stone, through which he produces works of refined sobriety and natural elegance. As in Zen gardens, his sculptures become islands of stillness, where silence transforms into rhythm and musicality. Visitors are invited to move through this inner landscape, slow down, observe, and become fully aware of the space around them.
Lee Ufan
Presented by: Dia Art Foundation
SMAC – San Marco Art Centre, Piazza San Marco 105
9 maggio – 22 novembre
Developed in close partnership with the artist, the exhibition traces the evolution of his iconic visual language with works ranging from new and historical paintings to large-scale installations and a new site-specific commission. The display is staged across eight of SMAC Venice’s galleries at the Procuratie in Piazza San Marco, bringing together a striking selection of works from over seven decades. Holistically, the presentation is designed to reflect both Lee’s long-standing dialogue with architectural space and his continued commitment to creating environments that prompt reflection and heightened awareness.
Official. Unofficial. Belarus.
Presented by: Belarus Free Theatre
Chiesa di San Giovanni Evangelista, San Polo 2454
9 maggio – 22 novembre
Curated by Daniella Kaliada with Natalia Kaliada MBE, this immersive, multi-sensory exhibition will explore how art is made, censored and experienced under authoritarian power and constant surveillance and invites visitors to encounter what it means when culture is forced to exist outside the state. Since 1994, artists in Belarus who engage critically with power have been forced to work in exile, in secrecy, or under threat of imprisonment. The Collateral Event Official. Unofficial. Belarus. brings forth the voices of artists that the state prefers silenced.
Screen Melancholy: Li Yi-Fan
Presented by: Taipei Fine Arts Museum of Taiwan
Palazzo delle Prigioni, Castello 4209
9 maggio – 22 novembre
The exhibition will continue Li Yi-Fan’s long-standing exploration of image-generation technology and improvisational narrative, using his unique creative approach to challenge our habitual modes of viewing and perception. In an age of information overload and constant flux, he not only engages in technological innovation, but also raises questions about perception, subjective consciousness, and how humankind will express itself in the future.
Song E Yoon: Songs Across Time
Presented by: The Foundation of ART NYC
Spazio 996/A, Fondamenta Sant’Anna, Castello 996/A
9 maggio – 22 novembre
Curated by Seohyun Kang, the exhibition features works by Song E Yoon and Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, exploring humanity’s engagement with memory, recording, and the passage of time. Set within a historic Venetian space, visitors can experience the exhibition in a context that reflects the city’s rich cultural and architectural heritage. The history of humanity is, above all, a history of communication. Long before the emergence of writing, humans marked the world – cave paintings, symbolic carvings, gestures and sounds – not as decoration, but as records of their relationship with the cosmos, the divine, and one another. Songs Across Time traces this impulse across cultures and millennia, asking whether the primal desire to find direction has ever truly ceased.
Su Xiaobai’s Alchemical Universe
Presented by: Los Angeles County Museum of Art e Su Xiaobai Foundation
Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel, Cannaregio 6099, 6071, 6072
9 maggio – 22 novembre
The Su Xiaobai Foundation, in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), presents Su Xiaobai’s Alchemical Universe, an exhibition of paintings by internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Su Xiaobai. Curated by Stephen Little, Curator of Chinese Art and Head of the Chinese, Korean, and South and Southeast Asian Art Departments at LACMA, and designed by architect Kulapat Yantrasast (WHY Architecture), the exhibition offers an unprecedented survey of Su Xiaobai’s practice. Since 2003, the artist has worked almost exclusively with natural lacquer, transforming a material historically associated with ritual and decorative objects into a powerful vehicle for contemporary abstraction. Installed across the historic rooms of Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel, the exhibition presents 35 works, from the artist’s first lacquer experiments in 2003 to recent paintings created especially for Venice. A central focus is Su Xiaobai’s newest series, Niao Niao, a Chinese poetic phrase embodying sensations of transience and evanescence.
There are also 100 National Pavilion which are part of the official program of the Biennale Arte 2026; discover our selection: National Pavilions to see – Biennale Arte 2026 | the PhotoPhore
