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Biennials

Performer in black underwear sings and points toward a tightly packed outdoor concert crowd as event staff stand between the stage and audience.

Toronto’s Fall Cultural Calendar Foregrounds Ruin, Rebirth and Rupture

Fall programming across the city spans not only TIFF and a biennial but also Melissa Auf der Maur's unfiltered '90s tour photography, a scaled-down survey of Impressionist masterworks and a sound installation built from 600 brass bells.
By Adam Robb
A woman with long curly dark hair, dressed in a black suit, stands with her hands in her pockets beside a large window in a bright white interior.

Toronto Biennial Curator Allison Glenn On Creating Connections and What Happens When Things Fall Apart

For the 2026 edition, 30 artists and collectives will explore the idea of rupture as a generative force, expanding the exhibition beyond Toronto via waterways, public spaces and cross-border collaborations.
By Elisa Carollo
A wide installation view of the 16th Gwangju Biennale showing paintings, sculptures and a sprawling translucent orange floor installation across a large industrial gallery.

Intentionally Smaller and Slower, the 16th Gwangju Biennale Traces a Path of Change

Artistic director Ho Tzu Nyen argues that art's influence operates on a longer timescale than the political controversies that dominated the opening press conference.
By Elisa Carollo
Two visitors view contemporary paintings installed against pale blue curtains, with a colorful textile-covered bench in the foreground.

Why Japan’s Art Market Is Growing Steadily Even as Other Markets Stall

By Elisa Carollo
A desert landscape at golden hour features Nicholas Galanin’s large-scale “INDIAN LAND” installation in block letters, with rugged mountains rising behind it.

For 10 Years, Desert X Has Let the Rift Valley Landscape Do the Curating

By Elisa Carollo
A man in black clothing and round glasses stands outdoors against a railing, with the Gwangju Biennale building and its Korean and English signage behind him.

Ho Tzu Nyen Wants the Gwangju Biennale to Honor the Past, Not Relive It

By Elisa Carollo
A group of visitors stands around a large pile of dismantled wooden beams and boards installed on a lawn in an Alpine town, with yellow buildings and forested mountains rising behind them.

In Gherdëina, Curating a Biennale Around the Politics of the Garden

By Jelena Sofronijevic
A spacious contemporary art exhibition beneath a geometric wooden ceiling features a white claw-foot bathtub covered with circular drain-like openings beneath a suspended shower, surrounded by framed photographs and other artworks.

At the First Bienal del Agua, Demetrio Paparoni Makes Water Political

By Elisa Carollo
61st Biennale Art 2026

What the Venice Biennale Reveals About the West’s Cultural Confidence

By Lucas Bitencourt
A person with short dark curly hair wearing a bright yellow jacket over a black outfit stands on a rooftop terrace with a city street and brick buildings in the background, smiling at the camera.

With the Taipei Biennial Ahead, Cecilia Alemani Reflects On What Makes an Exhibition Feel Alive

By Dan Duray
A photograph of a person wearing an intricate gold and silver facial adornment with pearls, holding the adornment near their chest.

What the Reykjavík Arts Festival Can Tell Us About the Future of the Interdisciplinary Biennial

By Chenoa Baker
An outdoor installation view shows rows of small greenish glass blocks arranged across a cobblestone courtyard inside a medieval stone fortress.

The Biennale of Contemporary Keramics Finds in Rhodes Its Most Resonant Stage Yet

By Nicolas Vamvouklis
An indoor garden installation fills a gallery with soil, rocks, trees and plants.

Global Art Biennials: Renovation, Revelation—or Repetition?

By Paco Barragán
Paintings and sculptural busts by Edouard Duval-Carrié are displayed against vivid blue walls in an installation exploring Haitian vodou cosmologies and colonial history at the Venice Biennale.

Koyo Kouoh’s Venice Biennale Looks to Ancient Wisdom to Mend a Fractured Present

By Elisa Carollo
A group of tall clay and organic sculptures resembling human figures stand in a dimly lit formation inside Chiara Camoni’s Italian Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale.

The Venice Biennale’s Most Powerful Pavilions Tune into Shared Consciousness

By Elisa Carollo
A close-up of a widescreen monitor embedded in gray panels shows a black-and-white image of a hand, with a small metal cart positioned to the left against the installation.

The Philippines Pavilion Turns the Country’s Maritime History into an Archive of Universal Longing

By Elisa Carollo

In the Polish Pavilion, “Liquid Tongues” Rewrites Our Hierarchy of the Senses

By Elisa Carollo
An older woman sits at a table painting a geometric pattern on fabric while a small monkey stands on her arm, with a large patterned textile hanging behind her.

Sara Flores On Bringing Shipibo-Konibo Cosmology to Peru’s Venice Pavilion

By Elisa Carollo
A bald, bearded man in a black jacket sits on a couch designed like oversized Ionic column capitals, posed in a living room with bookshelves behind him.

In Venice, Andreas Angelidakis Is Queering the Idea of a National Pavilion

By Sarah Moroz
A group of performers in matching outfits work together around sculptural materials in a pink-lit installation space.

La Biennale de Québec: What Shifts When Ice Splits

By Chenoa Baker
Two Arab men in traditional white dresses looking at an art installation on a wall.

The Art Fair as Cultural Policy Platform

By Elisa Carollo
A large warehouse space lined floor to ceiling with stitched jute sacks hosts a seated audience encircling a central runway beneath suspended fluorescent lights.

In Kochi, a Biennial Becomes a Civic Laboratory

By Elisa Carollo
Artists and curator pose together outdoors against a brick and stone wall

India Returns to Venice With a Pavilion Rooted in Memories of Home

By Elisa Carollo
A white sculpture by Anna Tsouhlarakis shows a horse’s head fitted with multiple white human arms pointing outward and spears mounted behind it, creating a striking hybrid monument displayed inside a gallery.

Anna Tsouhlarakis and Native Visibility at the Whitney Biennial

By Petala Ironcloud
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