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Press Release

Grenada Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition- La Biennale di Venezia
Title: “The Poetics of Correspondence”
Venue: Spazio Berlendis, Cannaregio 6301/A – Venice

The Grenada Arts Council is proud to announce the country’s ninth‐time participation in the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Veneziamarking once again Grenada’s leading role in the Caribbean region’s engagement with the global contemporary art stage.

Under the overarching curatorial framework of the Biennale — conceived by the late Koyo Kouoh (“In Minor Keys”) the Grenada Pavilion enters into a reflective mode of cross-cultural dialogue, titled “The Poetics of Correspondence”.

Appointed by Senator the Honourable Adrian Thomas, Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Creative Economy, Susan Mains is the Commissioner.   Curated by Daniele Radini Tedeschi, the pavilion assembles an exceptional constellation of artists, scholars and collaborators designed to respond to the general theme of the exhibition “In Minor Keys”, but deeply rooted in Grenada’s own histories of creolisation, diaspora, island-ecologies and cultural correspondence.

Featured among the artists are Arthur Daniel, Josine Dupont, Alexandra Kordas, Russell Watson, The Holzwege Group (Cinzia Bulone, Carlo Caldara, AyaMarray, Andrea Saltarelli, Luigina Fernanda Paola Cerrina), Edward Bowen together with the dynamic team of Lilo Nido and Chris Mast. The support team will include research coordinator Asher Mains, Suelin Low Chew Tung for media reporting, Farihah Kahn for social media and Frederika Adam for logistics coordination.

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CONCEPT

“The Poetics of Correspondence” invites the visitor to consider the ways in which islands, archipelagos, currents and networks of practice form not only territorial logic but also poetic networks — correspondences of meaning, memory, materiality and language. Through layered installations, time-based works, archival-inspired interventions and collaborative actions, the pavilion explores how Grenada, as an island in the Caribbean, is simultaneously local, regional and global, sending and receiving signals, ideas and affinities across the seas. “In Minor Keys” invites us to listen to the tones of relationship, intimacy, and resistance. As K. Kouoh writes: “Minor keys refuses orchestral bombast… come alive in the quiet tones, the lower frequencies, the hums, the consolations of poetry, all portals of improvisation to the elsewhere and the otherwise”. “The Poetics of Correspondence” follows this hum—this frequency beneath language—toward a mode of artmaking that is intrinsically social, inherently dialogical, and rooted in a poetics of relation. According to what the Martinican intellectual Édouard Glissant: that aesthetics allows the imaginary to return from the infinities of the universe to “the definable poetics of our world.” Art, for Glissant, is both wandering and grounding; it orients us in the abyss without offering mastery. It is a means of inhabiting complexity, not simplifying it. This exhibition also listens closely to Tim Ingold, who reminds us that “social life is one long correspondence.” To correspond is to co-become—to engage in an ongoing, unfinished process of mutual shaping. Art, in this view, is not an object but a relation: a lived, dialogical process that sustains life through responsiveness and attention. The works gathered here enact that ethic of attention. They do not proclaim, but murmur. They do not conclude, but carry. They come into being through shared breath, collaborative touch, intimate gesture, and sustained encounter. They are, as Kouoh describes, “intimate and convivial universes that refresh and sustain” especially in terrible times. We propose a curatorial space that is open-ended, polyphonic, and minor—not in scale, but in stance. These works do not demand a central narrative. Instead, they offer constellations, rhythms, and temporalities that privilege process over product, relation over resolution. Together, they form a chorus of correspondences: between artists and communities, materials and environments, pasts and possible futures. In a world fragmented by crisis, acceleration, and spectacle, “The Poetics of Correspondence” insists on listening. It celebrates artists who return us, gently andinsistently, to the slow, collaborative, poetic labor of making meaning together (Asher Mains).

VENUE
This ninth participation is emblematic of Grenada’s continuing commitment to cultural diplomacy, to creative sovereignty, and to positioning the Caribbean as a generative site within the international art field. Situated at Spazio Berlendis in Cannaregio, a historic Venetian quarter long defined by maritime exchange and cultural flows, the pavilion occupies a geography of correspondence: water-borne, port-connected, networked. The choice of venue amplifies the metaphor of transmission and reflection which underlies the work on view.

ROLES

  • Commissioner: Susan Mains
  • Curator: Daniele Radini Tedeschi
  • Participants:Edward Bowen, Arthur Daniel, Josine Dupont, Alexandra Kordas, Lilo Nido and Chris Mast, The Holzwege Group (Cinzia Bulone, Carlo Caldara, AyaMarray, Andrea Saltarelli, Luigina Fernanda Paola Cerrina), Russel Watson
  • Supporters: Grenada Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Creative Industries; Grenada Tourism Authority; Grenada National Lotteries Authority; Grenada Arts Council; Row Venice; Start Group, Roma; Venice Documentation Project; Art House 473 Grenada; Act: Art and Design Grenada; JWAA – Japan Women Artists Association; STAV SPA Autolinee & Automobili; MAGNA PARS SRL, Century21 Grenada; Insurance Consultants Grenada

PARTNER- MEDIA

We invite cultural institutions, media, sponsors and broader partner networks to join us in realising this vision. Opportunities for collaboration at the pavilion, co-publication, digital dissemination and youth programmes are actively open.

IMPORTANT DATES

Exhibition: 9 May to 22 November 2026

Preview: 6/7/8 May 2026

Press conference and inauguration of the Grenada Pavilion: 8th May at 4.30 p.m.

Spazio Berlendis, Cannaregio 6301/A, Venice

CONTACTS

For further information, press accreditation, image-bank access and partnership briefs, please contact:
Grenada Pavilion – Venice 2026
c/o Grenada Arts Council – National Pavilion Office

Email: grenadavenice@gmail.com; startsrls2015@gmail.com
Website: grenadavenice.org