For a brief moment ahead of the Venice Biennale this May, all eyes will be on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where the Carnegie Museum of Art is staging its 2026 edition of the Carnegie International. For its biggest edition to date, the exhibition has tapped an array of 61 artists based in nations ranging from the Philippines to Peru, many of whom will premiere new work when the show opens on May 2.
Founded in 1896, the Carnegie International is the oldest biennial-style show in the US; it is now staged once every four years. While the Carnegie International may lack the name recognition of the Whitney Biennial, which this year takes place concurrently in New York, this prestigious exhibition has been valuable in bringing international artists to the attention of Americans.
The Carnegie International was initially important in introducing Americans to European modernists, but it has in recent years become notable for its emphasis on artists from the Global South. This time around, the participants include Silät, an all-female collective of Indigenous weavers based in a remote part of Argentina that emerged as a star of the 2024 Venice Biennale; Sanchayan Ghosh, an Indian performance artist who contributed to Documenta 14 but has had limited exposure in the US; and Arturo Kameya, an ascendant Peruvian painter who considers how places are seeded with memory.
These artists will appear alongside a few more names more familiar to art audiences, including Turner Prize–nominated artist Jasleen Kaur and filmmaker Wu Tsang.
They are among the 36 participants who will be displaying newly commissioned work at this Carnegie International, which is organized by independent curator Ryan Inouye, Artists Space’s Danielle A. Jackson, and the Carnegie Museum’s Liz Park. Their show is titled “If the word we” and will deal with the concepts of multiplicity and flux.
“‘We’ is a complex and heterogenous position from where the three of us navigate contradictions of life while being receptive to the frequencies of our surroundings,” the curators write in an accompanying statement, which notes that the title is a reference to a quotation from a Haytham el-Wardany essay commissioned for the exhibition’s catalog.
Khalil Rabah, Renewed Belief (still), 1999.
Courtesy the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery
Eric Crosby, the vice president of the Carnegie Museums and the director of the Carnegie Museum of Art, told ARTnews that the globalism of this edition was intentional. “This is a museum that isn’t looking at like one world of contemporary art,” he said. “It’s looking at worlds upon worlds of contemporary art. And I think it’s essential that major exhibitions like this one can create the infrastructure for curatorial research that allows us to share those worlds with our public.”
The show’s curators journeyed both across the United States and the globe writ large, traveling to locales as diverse as Indonesia, Norway, and Brazil. The expansiveness of their research process is mirrored by the expansiveness of their show itself, which, in a rarity, does not only take place at the Carnegie Museum of Art but at partner venues too.
Arturo Kameya, Whatever comes first, 2024.
Photo Alex Marks/Courtesy the artist, Prospect 6, and Grimm, London, New York, and Amsterdam
American sculptor Torkwase Dyson, for example, will debut an installation in the planetarium at the Kamin Science Center, and Kameya and Claudia Martínez Garay will work collaboratively on an installation for the Mattress Factory. American playwright Brooke O’Harra will stage a performance at a local YMCA, and the Sogetsu Foundation, a collective of ikebana practitioners that was formed in Tokyo in 1927, will show new work at calligraphy by its founder, Sofu Teshigahara, at its Pittsburgh headquarters.
The Carnegie International is but one of many of biennial-style shows taking place in a year headlined by the Venice Biennale. The Diriyah Biennale recently opened in Saudi Arabia, and March will see the opening of the Whitney Biennial and the Biennale of Sydney. Also slated for this year are MoMA PS1’s Greater New York quinquennial, the New Museum Triennial, Manifesta (which this time takes place in Germany’s Ruhr region), and South Korea’s Gwangju Biennale.
Asked what the Carnegie International might contribute to a year marked by so many biennials, Crosby said, “The issue is less about differentiation between them and more about how they might be speaking to each other. The very framework of this exhibition, ‘we’ as a space of listening, creates room for these, all of these things to exist, right?”
RJ Messineo, History Painting, 2025.
Courtesy the artist and Canada, New York
Notably, there is minimal crossover between this Carnegie International and many of the aforementioned biennials that have revealed their artist lists.
The artist list for the Carnegie International follows below.
Georges Adéagbo (born 1942, Cotonou, Benin; lives in Cotonou, Benin, and Hamburg, Germany) †
asinnajaq (born 1991, Kuujjuaq, Canada; lives in Montreal, Canada) †
Fe Avila (born 1981, São Paulo, Brazil; lives in São Paulo, Brazil)*
Maithili Bavkar (born 1993, Mumbai, India; lives in New Delhi, India)*
Dineo Seshee Bopape (Raisibe) (born 1981, Polokwane, South Africa; lives in Johannesburg, South Africa) †
Saloua Raouda Choucair (born 1916, Beirut, Lebanon; died 2017, Beirut, Lebanon)
Chung Seoyoung (born 1964, Seoul, South Korea; lives in Seoul, South Korea) †
Dang A Dang Radio (founded 2021, the Philippines; based in the Philippines)
Torkwase Dyson (born 1951, Chicago, IL; lives in Beacon, NY) †
Elle Márjá Eira (born 1983 Hammerfest, Norway; lives in Kautokeino, Norway) †
Alia Farid (born 1985, Kuwait City, Kuwait; lives in Kuwait City, Kuwait, and San Juan, Puerto Rico) †
Sanchayan Ghosh (born 1970, Kolkata, India; lives in Santiniketan, India) †
Beatriz González (born 1932, Bucaramanga, Colombia; died 2026, Bogotá, Colombia)
Jonathan González (born 1991, New York, NY; based in New York, NY) †
Abraham González Pacheco (born 1989, San Simón el Alto, Mexico; lives in Tepoztlán, Mexico) †
Kearra Amaya Gopee (born 1993, Carapichaima, Kairi; lives on Lenape land in New York) †
Priyesh Gothwal (born 1993, Udaipur, India; lives in New Delhi, India)*
Eric Gyamfi (born 1990, Bekwai, Ghana; lives in Accra, Ghana) †
d harding with Jordan Upkett (born 1982, Moranbah, Queensland; lives in Meanjin [Brisbane]) †
Jason Hirata (born 1986, Seattle, WA; lives in New Jersey)
Hong Lee Hyunsook (born 1958, Mungyeong, Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea; lives in Seoul, South Korea) †
Hyun Nahm (born 1990, Goyang, South Korea; lives in Goyang, South Korea)
Firman Ichsan (born 1953, Jakarta, Indonesia; lives in Jakarta, Indonesia) †
G. Peter Jemison (Seneca, Heron Clan, born 1945, Silver Creek, NY; lives in Victor, NY) †, in collaboration with:
Jay Carrier (Wolf Clan, Onondaga and Tuscarora from the Grand River Reserve, Ontario, Canada, born 1963, Six Nations reservation in Ontario, Canada; died 2025, Niagara Falls, NY)
Katsitsionni Fox (Bear Clan, Mohawk, born 1968, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada; lives in Akwesasne, Mohawk Territory, NY)
Hayden Haynes (Deer Clan, Seneca, Kiowa, and Muskoke, born 1983, Claremore, OK; lives on the Allegany Territory of the Seneca Nation in Salamanca, NY)
Tom Huff (Deer Clan, Cayuga-Seneca, born, 1952, Silver Creek, NY; lives on the Onondaga Nation Territory near Nedrow, NY)
Craig Marvin (Mohawk, Wolf Clan, born 1981, Rochester, NY; lives in Rochester, NY)
Diane Schenandoah (Wolf Clan, Oneida Nation, born 1958, Syracuse, NY; lives in Oneida Nation Territory,
NY)
Randee Spruce (Seneca Nation, Heron Clan, born 1998, Olean, NY; lives in the Allegany Territory of the Seneca Nation in western New York)
Liz Johnson Artur (born 1964, Sofia, Bulgaria; lives in London, UK) †
Arturo Kameya (born 1984, Lima, Peru; lives in Amsterdam, Netherlands) †
Jasleen Kaur (born 1986, Pollokshields, Glasgow, Scotland; lives in London, UK) †
Li Yi-Fan (born 1989, Taipei, Taiwan; lives in Taipei, Taiwan, and Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Cinthia Marcelle (born 1974, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; lives in São Paulo, Brazil) †
Claudia Martínez Garay (born 1983, Ayacucho, Peru; lives in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Lima, Peru)†
Hans Ragnar Mathisen (born 1945, Narvik, Norway; lives in Tromsø, Norway)
RJ Messineo (born 1980, Hartford, CT; lives in Greenfield, MA) †
Shala Miller (born 1993, Cleveland, OH; lives in New York, NY) †
Joar Nango (born 1979, Alta, Norway; lives in Tromsø, Norway) †
Sarah Ndele (born 1991, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo; lives in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Brooke O’Harra (born 1973, Salem, OR; lives in Philadelphia, PA) †
Gabriela Pinilla (born 1983, Bogotá, Colombia; lives in Bogotá, Colombia)*
Khalil Rabah (born 1961, Jerusalem, Palestine; lives and works in Ramallah, Palestine) †
Ana Raylander Mártis dos Anjos (born 1995, somewhere far beyond the west and the south itself, in the south of the south; lives in São Paulo, Brazil)†
Miller Robinson (born 1992, Lodi, CA; lives in Tongva-Gabrieleno Territory, known as Los Angeles, CA) †
Donald Rodney (born 1961, West Bromwich, England; died 1998, London, UK)
Cameron Rowland (born 1988, Philadelphia, PA; lives in Queens, NY)
Daid Roy (born 1986, Los Angeles, CA; lives in Los Angeles, CA) †
Walter Scott (born 1985, Kahnawà:ke, Canada; lives in Montreal, Canada) †
Mohit Shelare (born 1992, Nagpur, India; lives in Delhi, India) †
Silät (founded 2023; based in northern Salta, Argentina) †
Reina Sugihara (born 1988, Tokyo, Japan; lives in Tokyo, Japan) †
Ginger Brooks Takahashi (born 1977, Huntington, WV; lives in Pittsburgh, PA) †
Camara Taylor (born 1625, London, England; lives in Glasgow, Scotland) †
Sōfū Teshigahara (born 1900, Osaka, Japan; died 1979, Tokyo, Japan) and Sogetsu Foundation (est. 1927, Tokyo, Japan) †
Natasha Tontey (born 1989, Minahasan Peninsula, Indonesia; lives in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, Indonesia)
Wu Tsang (born 1982, Worcester, MA; lives in Zurich, Switzerland, and London, England) †
Jonathan Yu (born 1974; lives in Hong Kong)*
Zhao Yao (born 1981, Sichuan Province, China; lives in Beijing, China)†
Artists indicated with a dagger (†) are creating newly commissioned projects.
Artists indicated with an asterisk (*) have been commissioned to produce contributions for the exhibition publication.
The exhibition is designed by Büro Koray Duman (B–KD)
