Annalee Davis at the 61st La Biennale di Venezia: On view in the Corderie and the Giardini

AWL is pleased to announce that Annalee Davis (b. 1963, Barbados) is participating in In Minor Keys, the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Koyo Kouoh and on view from 9 May to 22 November 2026.

 

Davis’s inclusion marks a landmark moment for a Barbadian artist within the Biennale’s central exhibition. She presents four interconnected series of works that engage ecological memory, post-plantation landscapes, and embodied practices of care in the Caribbean. At the centre is Let This Be My Cathedral, which reflects on species loss through the story of the extinct Eskimo curlew once recorded in Barbados, using this history to consider ecological grief and remembrance. Rather than approaching extinction solely through mourning, Davis opens the work to other registers of attention—curiosity, observation, and renewed ways of seeing through botanical studies and her herbarium practice.

 

Across the other three series, she moves between a sense of distance from the living world and an effort to reconnect with the natural world. Rooted in the small garden surrounding her home and studio—conceived as a form of secular cathedral—her practice holds grief and beauty in careful balance, allowing them to coexist without resolution.

 

Davis’s installation is presented across the Corderie and the Giardini.