On May 9, 2026, the 61st Venice Biennale opens to the public, an occasion that inspires a celebratory spirit at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons.
Filled with excitement, Casco Art Institute joins our former Director, Binna Choi, in celebration as her curatorial vision for the Korean Pavilion of the International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale (2026) comes to life. News of her appointment as Artistic Director for the pavilion by the Arts Council Korea (ARKO) has already instilled a strong sense of recognition and resonance with the commons-based values and practices we share. Now, with the opening around the corner, we take this moment to congratulate her and honor this remarkable achievement as a continuation of her transformative artistic legacy.
Titled Liberation Space: Fortress/Nest, and with the participation of artists Goen Choi and Hyeree Ro, the exhibition reimagines the pavilion as a living, breathing site, a monument toward what is called a “liberation space.” It seeks to move beyond its ambivalent framing as “fortress” and “nest” by engaging its geopolitical and historical dimensions as the expression of a nation still in the making, rather than a fixed national container. The term “liberation space” (haebang gonggan) originates from the period between 1945 and 1948, following Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule and preceding the establishment of the South Korean state. Marked by both collective hope and intense ideological conflict under geopolitical pressure, the project reimagines “liberation space” as an ongoing, unfinished practice of struggle toward shared, life-affirming futures.
At its core, the project unfolds through two intertwined sculptural forms: Meridian, developed by Goen in collaboration with Thirdhand, and Bearing by Hyeree Ro and her collaborators. While materially distinct, both works open pathways through the pavilion. Together, these forms soften and unsettle the rigid architectural frame of the nation state, creating a porous and attentive environment. Extending this living monument, the project brings together a fellowship of cultural practitioners, including writer and singer Lang Lee, novelist Han Kang, photographer Yezoi Hwang, activist farmer Huju Kim, and artist Christian Nyampeta. Christian has been a long-term contributor to Casco as an Artist at Work in 2013, while developing his long-term research project How to Live Together, and participating in The Grand Domestic Revolution project. Together, all contributions nourish and expand Liberation Space: Fortress/Nest’s relational field.
Throughout the exhibition, a group of “Bearers” activates the space through daily processions, while collaborations such as that with the Japan Pavilion and the growing Liberation Space Network further extend its reach beyond Venice toward future iterations. Also contributing to the realization of the exhibition is Casco’s ecosystem member Eugene Hannah Park, a participant in the de Appel Curatorial Program 2023, who here takes on the role of curatorial assistant.
While drawing from the Korean experience, Liberation Space: Fortress/Nest also learns from and resonates with parallel struggles and aspirations worldwide, from Hawaii to Palestine, Nepal to Sudan, Iran to Hungary, and beyond. It suggests that “liberation space” is not bound to a single geography, but emerges wherever collective life insists on being reimagined. In this sense, the exhibition enters into a profound dialogue with the guiding theme of the 61st International Art Exhibition.
Titled In Minor Keys and conceived by the late curator Koyo Kouoh, the Venice Biennale 2026 invites listening to the persistent signals of earth and life, connecting to deeper, affective frequencies. The allegory of the musical minor key becomes a way to create space for quiet resistance through contemporary art. Grounded in a deep belief in artists as vital interpreters of the social and psychic conditions of our time, and as catalysts for new relations and possibilities, the connections and resonances between Koyo’s and Binna’s curatorial proposals are far from coincidental. Rather, they can be understood in light of the long-standing history of relationship and exchange between the two curators, unfolding over many years and nurtured through their respective roles and participation in Arts Collaboratory.
Arts Collaboratory (AC) is a translocal network of art organizations across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, initiated in 2007 to foster exchange and South-to-South connections, and since evolved into a self-governed ecosystem shaped through collective assemblies and sustained exchange. At present, the network operates as a collaborative platform grounded in commoning, mutual support, and shared responsibility, offering fertile ground to learn with and from one another while developing collective visions across contexts. Participating organizations engage in expanded artistic, curatorial, and economic experiments aimed at social change and sustainability, while cultivating new geographies of relation and webs of solidarity.
It is within this framework that Binna and Koyo came into close and sustained relation through the membership of their respective organizations. Casco, based in Utrecht and directed by Binna from 2008 to 2023, has been an active member of the network, contributing to its development through its commitment to commons-based practices and institutional experimentation. Similarly, RAW Material Company, founded in Dakar in 2008 by Koyo, has played a pivotal role within Arts Collaboratory as a center for art, knowledge, and society, dedicated to curatorial practice, artistic research, education, and critical discourse. Under Koyo’s leadership, RAW became a vital space for transdisciplinary exchange and for advancing socially engaged artistic practices, fostering connections across geographies and generations, and serving as an important source of inspiration for the network’s evolving approaches to collaboration, learning, and collective organization.
In this sense, the Biennale becomes a special occasion for coming together through shared histories and commitments. This ethos further materializes through the inclusion of other AC members within the main exhibition, particularly the initiative Lugar a Dudas. Based in Cali, Colombia, Lugar a Dudas is an independent cultural space dedicated to experimental artistic practices, critical discourse, and collective knowledge production. Their contribution, Formas de lucha, presents a choreographic and visual essay drawing on embodied practices such as boxing, capoeira, and machete fencing, not as acts of violence, but as forms of encounter structured by restraint, respect, and non-annihilation. Through moving images and open-ended questions, the work reflects on how bodies meet, how difference is negotiated, and how conflict might be reimagined beyond domination or erasure, proposing alternative ways of understanding coexistence, otherness, and dialogue in a time marked by escalating global tensions and asymmetrical conflicts.
What emerges in this edition of the Biennale is therefore not only a curatorial framework, but a lived ecology of relations, one that extends across continents, is manifested through a broader constellation of invited participants, and continues to grow through collaboration. Bringing together individual artists, duos, collectives, and artist-led organisations from diverse geographies, the exhibition reflects Koyo’s attentiveness to affinities and resonances between practices, even across great distances. By placing artists from contexts such as Salvador, Dakar, San Juan, Beirut, Paris, or Nashville into dialogue, the project traces connections through shared sensibilities, material explorations, and visionary approaches, unfolding in parallel rather than through linear or centralized narratives. In this way, In Minor Keys extends Koyo’s relational approach to curating, shaped through years of encounters and exchanges across contexts.
Within this wider constellation, Binna’s Liberation Space: Fortress/Nest takes its place as a resonant contribution. Its emphasis on care, gathering, processual time, and the creation of spaces for collective endurance aligns closely with Koyo’s vision, while offering its own situated articulation. Alongside this, contributions such as Lugar a Dudas’ Formas de lucha further expand this field of relation, proposing alternative ways of engaging difference, encounter, and coexistence. Together, these practices affirm the possibility of art as a site not only of representation, but of ongoing world-making, carrying forward, across different contexts and in different forms, a shared commitment to imagining and sustaining life otherwise.
With deep admiration and a sense of shared journey, we celebrate Binna for her contribution to the Biennale, as well as all the participants involved, including our friends from Lugar a Dudas, led by cherished Director Sally Mizrahi, and the RAW Material Company team, without whom this project could not have been brought into being. At Casco, we hold this moment as one of collective possibility.
We close by honoring the memory of Koyo, whose work has profoundly reshaped the landscape of contemporary art. As a curator, institution builder, and educator, she created vital infrastructures for artistic research, critical discourse, and collective learning, centering voices from Africa and its diasporas within a global conversation. She was also the first Black woman appointed to curate the Venice Biennale, marking a historic and transformative moment for the field. Her practice was defined by a deep commitment to artists, to relationality, and to building spaces where art could act as a catalyst for knowledge and social transformation. Widely recognized as one of the most influential curators of her generation, she expanded the horizons of contemporary art beyond dominant Eurocentric frameworks while nurturing new generations of practitioners across contexts.
We are deeply saddened by her passing and hold her transformative curatorial and institutional legacy with care, knowing that her vision continues to live on through the many communities, institutions, and practices she helped bring into being.
While Koyo is no longer physically present, her presence is strongly felt, and her vision for the Biennale continues to be carried forward with commitment and care by the team, including Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira, Rasha Salti, Siddhartha Mitter, and Rory Tsapayi, with significant development rooted at RAW Material Company in Dakar. In Minor Keys thus becomes not only a curatorial project, but also a collective act of continuation and sustenance of the relational and transformative ethos that defined her research and curatorial practice.
With care,
Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons Team
