Otobong Nkanga and the Venice Biennale installation Soft Offerings
Published on 08/21/2026 at 11:56 | Editorial responsibility: Rafael Müller, Editor-in-Chief AD HOC NEWS
Otobong Nkanga anchors one of the most discussed works in Venice this year. For the 61st Venice Art Biennale’s main exhibition In Minor Keys, she presents the installation Soft Offerings to Silenced Voices and to All Who Have Turned to Dust at the Central Pavilion in the Giardini, as the Biennale’s official program outlines.
Soft Offerings at the Central Pavilion
Nkanga’s Soft Offerings to Silenced Voices and to All Who Have Turned to Dust transforms the four entrance columns of the Central Pavilion by cladding them in locally produced brick and attaching ceramic vessels planted with climbing greenery, per the Biennale’s exhibition text.
As the plants grow across the exhibition period, they progressively envelop the brick surface and the columns themselves, turning the façade into a slowly changing living skin that reflects Nkanga’s sustained interest in how human structures intertwine with fragile ecologies.
Biennial presence and Venice context
The 61st Venice Art Biennale In Minor Keys, curated by Koyo Kouoh, runs from May 9 to November 22, 2026 and places Nkanga among a cohort of artists addressing histories of extraction, memory and resistance in the Giardini and Arsenale.
Her participation in Venice continues a trajectory of high-profile biennial appearances, following earlier contributions to documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens and the Sharjah and São Paulo biennials, where she similarly connected material processes to social and environmental narratives.
Further reporting and background on Otobong Nkanga
Readers can follow how Nkanga’s installations, tapestries and performances unfold across biennials, museums and commissions in recent AD HOC NEWS coverage and official project pages.
The work core across landscapes
Nkanga’s broader practice spans installation, drawing, textile works, performance and photography, often starting from specific sites of mining, industrial infrastructure or soil care and branching into visual maps of entangled labor, memory and ecological repair.
Works such as the tapestry-based series Landversation and installations like Contained Measures of Kolanut and Steel to Rust connect the intimate scale of bodily gesture and storytelling with large geopolitical circuits of resource extraction.
Where the artist stands now
Against this backdrop, Nkanga’s Venice installation marks the latest chapter in her sustained engagement with how materials, plants and built structures carry histories of exploitation and care into the present biennial landscape.
Otobong Nkanga in overview
- Artist: Otobong Nkanga
- Medium / Genre: Installation, drawing, tapestry and performance
- Born: 1974, Kano, Nigeria
- Place(s) of practice: Studio practice based in Belgium with international project sites
- Active since: Mid-1990s, with museum exhibitions following from the early 2000s
- Key work groups: Landversation, Contained Measures of Kolanut, Taste of a Stone, Soft Offerings to Silenced Voices and to All Who Have Turned to Dust
- Current/last exhibition: Otobong Nkanga. I dreamt of you in colours, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts Lausanne, April 3 to August 23, 2026
- Major collections: Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, Tate, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, various European public collections
- Awards: Multiple honors including the 2026 Sikkens Prize and the 2026 Finkenwerder Art Prize
- Next date: Solo exhibition Humus Blues, Singer Laren, opening October 27, 2026
Frequently asked questions about Otobong Nkanga
Where can Otobong Nkanga’s work be experienced in 2026?
In 2026, Nkanga’s work is present at the 61st Venice Art Biennale’s Central Pavilion and in the retrospective Otobong Nkanga. I dreamt of you in colours at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne.
What is the focus of the installation Soft Offerings to Silenced Voices and to All Who Have Turned to Dust?
The installation uses bricks, ceramic vessels and climbing plants on the Central Pavilion columns in Venice to weave together ideas of architecture, living matter and the slow emergence of care around histories of extraction.
Which materials recur across Nkanga’s major work groups?
Nkanga repeatedly turns to earth pigments, textiles, industrial metals, plant life and mapped diagrams, creating works that move between the analytical and the sensorial while foregrounding the human labor embedded in these materials.
This article was produced with a.i. support and editorially reviewed. All statements without guarantee; auction results, exhibition dates and awards may change at short notice.
