There are many fruiting mango trees in Dakar. One of them is located in the courtyard of RAW Material Company. In April, the tree is heavy, weighed down by ripening fruit that is rumoured to listen and respond to those it shelters. Before the 61st Venice Biennale, the same tree welcomed Koyo Kouoh and her team to convene under it as they mapped out how In Minor Keys would be realised.
As Kouoh’s team recalls, “The first morning, as Koyo stepped into the courtyard, beaming with her inimitable smile, she picked up the mangoes that had fallen, washed them and bit into one gleefully. The second morning, emboldened by her delight, we imitated her. It seemed ungracious to refuse the tree’s offering. After that, our discussions were often interrupted by the thudding sound of mangoes falling into the courtyard. Or perhaps: We became attentive to the fruits falling and to the tree. We noted that fruit fell when the name of an artist was spoken. This happened often enough that when a name was spoken and no fruit fell, we paused, in expectation.”
The tree offered its fruit. They accepted. That small exchange feels like the first principle of this edition. Attention. Reception. A willingness to listen to what falls, what arrives, what ripens without instruction. The mango tree became a witness, catalyst and quiet collaborator. It marked time through its own logic and not the one inscribed by global art calendars. If this Biennale feels African, it is because its earliest movements were choreographed in the minor keys of such gestures. Mangoes falling at the mention of artists. Silence when none fell. A team learning to treat intuition as data. Ambience as directive.
In the same way, a biennale centering the African continent does not do so through thematics. Instead it arrives as a method of engagement.
It is in the way Kouoh handled resonance. Resisting the spectacle of categories, the team listened for the small vibrations between practices with the intention of finding frequency over ticking the box of representation. We see it in Berni Searle’s negotiations of memory. Thania Petersen’s insistence on belonging as a layered inheritance. Nicholas Hlobo’s sutures and ruptures. Nolan Oswald Dennis’s diagrams of the unseen. Senzeni Marasela’s persistent history. It is also in the way Johannes Phokela folds the archive back onto itself or how Buhlebezwe Siwani’s grounded cosmologies and Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi’s ever-expanding spiritual architectures are in intergenerational conversation. It is in the intimacy of Billie Zangewa’s stitching and the way Kemang Wa Lehulere assembles fragments into new lineages.
To imagine this edition as an African Venice Biennale is not to declare a continental triumph. It is to recognise that the conceptual scaffolding was built from relational gestures.
Here, the mango tree becomes a way of understanding how Koyo’s curatorial language and motifs grew from devoted witnessing which in turn makes for thinking that refuses rigid demarcation and trusts in thresholds as portals rather than borders.
But this model should not be mistaken as one emerging from abstraction. Instead they use lived encounters as the first reference of knowledge. Not to be flattened into a slogan, the idea of an African Venice Biennale is one rooted in condition not content.
And perhaps this is where visitors might begin.
Not with the encyclopedic urgency Venice often induces. Not by trying to see everything. But by learning from the mangos. By entering the exhibition like one steps into a courtyard where something is already happening. Where the atmosphere is part of the instruction. Where attention is a form of participation. Where listening becomes an ethic.
To approach In Minor Keys is to slow one’s pace until the thresholds make themselves known. To understand that the exhibition was built from accumulations rather than arguments. To read the spaces the way Kouoh read the falling of fruit. As guidance. As punctuation. As a kind of choreography impossible to replicate and unnecessary to control.
This is not a Biennale that rewards extraction. It rewards attunement.
If visitors were to follow the logic of the mango tree, they might notice when a work pulls them in without spectacle. They might allow themselves to pause when a room feels like it is holding its breath. They might listen for frequencies between artists rather than seeking thematic confirmation. They might treat the exhibition not as a route to be conquered but as an environment that reveals itself slowly, seasonally, with ripening.
Under the mango tree in Dakar, knowledge fell in its own time. In Venice, it may not fall from branches, but it will arrive in gestures. In atmospheres. In the minor key shifts that Koyo trusted as the true architecture of meaning.
The invitation is simple. Move gently. Listen deeply. Let the logic of the courtyard guide the logic of your looking.