The Venice Biennale often takes time to digest and find a thread—if there is one—that unites the art that has been chosen to sum up the world at this moment. This installment is no different. Titled In Minor Keys, the word minor carries heft; it describes the choices made by these featured artists to offer a soft touch, a light footprint, barely whispering meaning.
In searching for this thread of meaning, I noted something which I don’t remember seeing so prominently in past Biennales. It’s something that I’ve been seeing for quite some time in contemporary art practices: the use of miniatures, either as part of a work, or as the main act. Of course, there is a long tradition of miniature art, from the Venus of Willendorf (who is small enough to nest in the palm of a human hand) (ca. 24–22,000 B.C.E), to portable altarpieces or miniature illuminated manuscripts. Victorians wore tiny paintings of their beloved in lockets around the neck. But there has been a rise in this practice that seems to have been reignited in the last few decades. Think of Charles Simmonds’s miniature “Dwellings” that popped up all over Manhattan in the late seventies. Or Yinka Shonibare’s 2002 dollhouse and Sanctuary City (2024) architectural models. Alberto Burri painted miniatures of his own work in the 1950s, but were only exhibited in the Guggenheim Museum show of 2015-16.
Now the trend is evident in this year’s Biennale. Perhaps because of the fiction I write for young readers, I stopped for a moment at the written introduction in the central pavilion, describing the term “minor key” as not only a reference to music, but the geographical meaning of “small islands, worlds amid oceans,” and that “the exhibition’s composition is formed by artistic practices that open portals.”
