Columbia Artists Materialize Metaphor at the 2026 Venice Biennale
Laurie Anderson '72 (BC '69) and Kambui Olujimi '13 are among the 110 artists invited to participate in the Venice Biennale's 61st International Art Exhibition, In Minor Keys, presenting works alongside the likes of Marcel Duchamp and Pauline Oliveros. The most prominent international art festival of its kind—dubbed "the Olympics of the art world"—the 2026 Biennale celebrates artwork from 99 countries in a series of national pavilions across the city.
"How do you get a painting inside your head?" asks Benjamin Moser for the Biennale. Anderson's answer: sound. Her multimedia work, Notebook (immersive painting installation, sound, dimensions variable, 2026), collapses the distance between painting and viewer. It is a portal into the mind of the legendary avant-garde artist, or a way for her to get into yours. Or is there a meaningful difference? "Anderson shows what was already in there," offers Moser.
Olujimi's series of ink, watercolor, and graphite works on paper, titled North Star, considers the Self and Blackness within the unbounded "context" of the cosmos; in this metaphorical realm, white supremacy is represented by gravity. Like Anderson, Olujimi pushes his metaphor beyond figuration, into the corporeal. In 2022, he chartered a zero-gravity flight for seven creatives from the African diaspora, whose weightless figures became models for his paintings. They float and drift in various states of repose and play. "The result is a radical and tender invitation to embrace the possibility of unboundedness in our everyday, terrestrial lives," said Lauren Schell Dickens for the Biennale.
Delving into the complexity of the terrestrial, Adjunct Assistant Professor Michael Joo presents two mixed media installations in the main exhibition that consider technology as an extension of nature: That Which Evaporates All Around Us (9 fossil limestone slabs, steel mobile suspension, electronics, audio equipment, 314" x 383" x 346", 2025) and Noospheres: Expanded (4 LED panels, support structure, digital and custom AI programming, 314" x 224" x 310", 2026). While the first uses transducers to elucidate the vibrational field of fossils, the second demonstrates how blockchain technology can generate 3D-printed crystal forms used in ongoing research on coral resilience.
At the National Pavilion of the Philippines, Jon Cuyson '10 picks up the eco-technical thread: his installation Sea of Love / Dagat ng Pag-ibig pays homage to his family, mollusks, and the Filipino labor that fuels the movement of commerce across global waterways. "I am honored to represent the Philippines on the world’s most prestigious stage for contemporary art," Cuyson told e-flux. "My projects have been shaped through modules of memory—a practice of interconnected works that act as partial archives for submerged histories, maritime labor and fragments of belonging. Our exhibition continues this inquiry by exploring mussels as a motif and metaphor for understanding kinship across land and sea."
Just a boat ride away, Hugh Hayden '18 installed a major new work on the island of San Giacomo to coincide with the Biennale. As a part of the restoration of ruins on the island, Hayden's Huff and a puff is a lovely little brick chapel—at a 40º tilt. While he was inspired by the steadfast brick of The Three Little Pigs, Hayden—who was trained as an architect—is open to interpretations of the leaning church. "Some may say that this church expresses itself because religion makes things go wrong, but others may say that what we need right now is more faith, more spirituality, and more kindness," he told ara.
The artists' statements are not confined to their work in the exhibition: Anderson and Joo—along with over 70 other artists, curators, and exhibition staff representing 22 national pavilions—have withdrawn from consideration for any awards, in solidarity with the jury, which resigned in protest of Israel and Russia's participation in this year's exhibition. The signed statement was published to e-flux.
The 61st Venice Biennale is on view May 6 through November 22, 2026.