Éric Baudelaire
In 2022, Éric Baudelaire (b. 1973, Salt Lake City, UT) presented the exhibition When There Is No More Music Left to Write alongside avant-garde composer Alvin Curran at Spike Island. The exhibition featured three commissioned films by Baudelaire, two large-scale ‘sound sculptures’ by Curran, and an archival display assembled by music historian Maxime Guitton, tracing a musical revolution that took place during a time of radical political mobilisations in 1970s Italy. Exhibiting in In Minor Keys—the Venice Biennale’s main exhibition, curated by the late Koyo Kouoh— Baudelaire presents his five-channel video installation, Death Passed My Way and Stuck This Flower in My Mouth (2021).

Beverly Buchanan
In the first survey of Beverly Buchanan’s (b. 1940, Fuquay, NC) work in Europe, five decades of Buchanan’s practice will be presented at Spike Island this September in Beverly Buchanan: Weathering, continuing until January 2027. Presented in Sala Chini, Venice’s historic exhibition hall located in the Central Pavilion, Buchanan’s anti-monumental approach to Land Art and public sculpture is celebrated as part of In Minor Keys. Engaging in issues of class, gender and colonial memory, Buchanan’s environmental interventions and signature ‘shack’ sculptures highlight the connection between architecture and colonial disparities.

Dan Lie
In 2025, Dan Lie presented Sleeping Methodologies at Spike Island, an exhibition informed by grief and exhaustion. Here, Lie developed an anti-monumental provocation to take a step back and consider: What would happen if I stopped? As part of In Minor Keys, Lie presents Temple of Passages, an installation featuring strings of fragrant flowers threaded along thick maritime rope, decaying and breaking down in real time. Exploring themes of Queer studies, grief and migration, Lie draws upon their ongoing research into mortality and renewal, non-human ecologies and ritualistic ontologies.

Lubaina Himid
In 2017, Lubaina Himid RA, CBE (b. 1954, Zanzibar) presented her Turner Prize-winning exhibition at Spike Island, Navigation Charts, a body of work challenging Eurocentric narratives around race, gender and class while centring Black subjects; a methodology present throughout Himid’s practice. This year, Himid presents Presenting History: Testing Translation at the British Pavilion in Venice, exploring the central theme of how we make a home in places not designed to welcome us.

Asmaa Jama
Asmaa Jama works across film, performance and archival gestures, looking beyond borders to explore commonalities and connections across the global Black diaspora, a theme explored in their 2022 exhibition at Spike Island Except this time nothing returns from the ashes. Jama is now based in Spike Island Studios, where they produced the new moving image and installation works currently on display at the Somalia Pavilion. This is the first time the Federal Republic of Somalia is being represented at the Venice Biennale, where Jama contributes to SADDEXLEY alongside artists Ayan Farah and Warsan Shire. The exhibition takes its name from a Somali poetic form shaped through triadic composition and rooted in Somalia’s oral tradition.

“It’s a huge honour to represent Somalia at the Venice Biennale. It’s a dream to present work on such an international stage. I’m especially proud to be part of a hardworking team alongside other artists, cultural workers, and contributors to the programme. It will undoubtedly bring Somali art to the forefront.”

— Asmaa Jama