On view
61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia
In Minor Keys by Koyo Kouoh
May 9th - November 22, 2026
I’m honored to share that I’ll be presenting new work at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys, curated by Koyo Kouoh. These sculptures were created to sing. While the exhibition unfolds “in a minor key,” I felt compelled to offer something that rises, something that reaches upward from within shadow. Venice, and the Arsenale in particular, carries a density and darkness that felt essential to respond to with uplift, breath, and resonance.
I found a teal shipping container and was drawn to it immediately. It carried histories of movement, labor, and containment long before I touched it. Its color stayed with me, and inside that teal I began imagining sky: soft pinks, yellows, periwinkle, deep blues dissolving into one another.
After crushing the container, I brought its fragments back into the studio, where each piece was reassembled. I approach metal like collage: it becomes both structure and surface. The paint, too, is physical. I work with my whole body, not just a brush, so that each gesture carries weight and breath. There’s always tension: softness against steel, lift against gravity, control against surrender.
This body of work unfolds through three sculptures: The bond between matter and heaven rises and reaches; The shelter of knowledge grounds and steadies; Disciples of joy in the material world plays and turns toward light. Together, they form an ode, an invocation. Installed within the Arsenale, they hold tension between the earthbound and the ethereal, between memory and possibility. My hope is that they offer a kind of replenishment and that in their reaching, breathing, and singing, they awaken something equally alive in you.
Subscribe to my quarterly newsletter: