The Art Angle
What Biennials Reveal About the Art World
Why It Matters
Understanding biennial programming offers insight into the broader art world’s shifting priorities, from redressing historical omissions to re‑centering contemporary voices. This episode is timely as the Venice Biennale opens soon, providing a lens on how curatorial choices reflect and shape global conversations about colonialism, identity, and the future of art.
Key Takeaways
- •Dead artists drop 50%, returning to 2019 living focus.
- •Biennial age mix favors younger and senior creators.
- •Western and Global South representation equalizes around 50/50.
- •Few artists dominate shows; Nolan Oswald Dennis leads.
- •Plants, water, and sound dominate current biennial themes.
Pulse Analysis
The latest analysis of global biennials, highlighted by the upcoming Venice Biennale, reveals a decisive swing back to living artists. After a brief surge of historical and deceased figures in 2022 and 2024, the proportion of dead artists has plummeted by roughly half, echoing the pre‑pandemic balance of 2019. This shift underscores curators’ renewed emphasis on contemporary production, with most living participants born between 1950 and 1980, yet the data shows a surprising tilt toward both younger emerging voices and senior veterans, reducing the dominance of mid‑career mainstays.
Geographically, the biennial field is re‑balancing itself. Where recent editions leaned heavily toward the Global South or, conversely, Euro‑centric line‑ups, the current roster sits near an even split between Western and Global South artists. This 50/50 distribution reflects a broader curatorial intent to redress historic absences while maintaining a cosmopolitan dialogue. Notably, a handful of artists appear repeatedly across more than ten shows, with South African Nolan Oswald Dennis topping the list, followed by Canadian Kapwani Kiwanga and Palestinian Jamana Mana, signaling a tight‑knit circuit of high‑visibility creators.
Beyond demographics, thematic currents are unmistakable. Plant‑based works, ecological installations, and water‑focused projects dominate, signaling an anti‑digital, lived‑experience turn. Artists like Kapwani Kiwanga’s "Flowers for Africa" and Sammy Bologi’s terrarium pieces fuse botanical research with post‑colonial critique. Simultaneously, sound art—from Lebanese creator Tara’s instrument environments to Indigenous composer Raven Chacon’s experimental installations—reinforces the push for immersive, sensory experiences. Together, these trends suggest biennials are evolving into platforms that prioritize immediacy, ecological consciousness, and a re‑examined global narrative, offering a fresh lens for collectors, institutions, and audiences alike.
Episode Description
We talk a lot about biennials. Art is in some ways a very local, in-person thing. Yet artists and creators and writers are also part of a global conversation, looking at and thinking about each other across borders, and these big, recurring art festivals can serve as an opportunity or a prompt to think about what that bigger conversation.
One of the biggest, the Venice Biennale, is coming up next month. It’s centered around a show called “In Minor Keys,” curated by the late curator Koyo Kouoh. My colleague Jo Lawson-Tancred recently had an article looking at the artists in that show, comparing where they were from and how old they were to the last several editions, to see how the art conversation was evolving.
Meanwhile, Ben Davis just published a big project this week, looking at the last four years of art biennials around the world, from the big ones in places like Istanbul, Gwangju, São Paulo, Sharjah, and Venice, to smaller or more experimental ones. He gathered all the names of artists to find out who has shown the most around the world since the 2022 Venice Biennale four years ago. Some are familiar names, some were total surprises.
With Venice soon to open, Ben speaks with Jo to talk about what we’ve learned from our different projects about where the global art conversation has been and where it might be headed.
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