When the Venice Biennale first announced the artist list for Koyo Kouoh’s main exhibition in February, the show included 111 participants. But when you visit the Biennale’s website now, you’ll find that Kouoh’s exhibition, titled “In Minor Keys,” now features 110 artists.
ARTnews can reveal that the artist who was struck from the list was Bodys Isek Kingelez, a Congolese artist known for his vast, colorful cardboard sculptures of opulent cities. Kingelez, who termed these works “extreme maquettes,” died in 2015, by which point he had already appeared in Okwui Enwezor’s Documenta XI in 2002 and was celebrated widely.
Despite Kingelez appearing on that initial artist list, a Biennale spokesperson told ARTnews, “His works initially considered for inclusion were ultimately no longer available.” It isn’t clear which works by him Kouoh’s curatorial advisers had sought to include.
Kingelez was to be one of the few dead artists in the exhibition, alongside figures such as Marcel Duchamp, Issa Samb, Pauline Oliveros, and Seyni Awa Camara.
His works are held by institutions across the globe, from the Museum of Modern Art, which held a survey of his art in 2018, to the Tate museum network in London. One of Kingelez’s expansive sculptures currently forms the centerpiece of a section about urban centers in “New Humans: Memories of the Future,” a sprawling group exhibition currently on view at the New Museum in New York.
“In Minor Keys” was realized posthumously following Kouoh’s death in 2025. Five curatorial advisers that Kouoh had personally chosen—Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira and Rasha Salti, along with Siddartha Mitter and Rory Tsapayi—helped see through her vision.
