Now and forever 🍉🍉🍉 — poster by @jessxsnow of @justseeds

Cultural workers on strike joined by over 3500 people in the streets, extending from Giardini to Arsenale on May 8—in a historic refusal of the genocide pavilion. Speakers included but not limited to Gabrielle Goliath from the canceled South African pavilion which found a new host in the city, Mohammed Joha from the main exhibition In Minor Keys, and Belgian Pavilion curator Caroline Dumalin. With 237 participating artists, curators, and artworkers directly participating in the 61st Venice Biennale having signed on to the @angalliance letter and more on strike that day, responding to the call by @biennalocene and ANGA. The center cannot hold. BL🚫CCO TUTT🚫

It’s May 8, 2026. There are 28 national pavilions on strike at the 61st Venice Biennale, with numerous artists from the main exhibition In Minor Keys, and Ocean Space. The Giardini ticket office is closed. This is the first strike since 1968 here, and building building—larger and more encompassing in the present moment than ever before. @angalliance @biennalocene @adl_cobas @miriconosci.beniculturali @saledocks @usbpadova have called a cultural workers strike to say NO to the genocide pavilion. Including the pavilions of Austria, Belgium, Canada, Catalan, Cyprus, Czech and Slovak, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Italy (by the performers), Ireland, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Türkiye, United Kingdom We stand with Palestine as we know by now that the destruction of Palestine is the destruction of the world.

MAY 8: VENICE ON STRIKE As a cultural worker, I am in solidarity with the artists and art workers who have called the MAY 8 STRIKE to collectively say no to the genocide pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale. Today marks the first Biennale strike called since 1968, and at a larger scale than then. The artists and workers united for the liberation of Palestine! Please grid post and share to show your support. @angalliance @biennalocene

A huge thank you to everyone who came from near and far for the opening of the Spring Season of exhibitions at KunstInstiuut Melly, Rotterdam. Always a joy and a blessing to show alongside and in conversation with dear friends Ruanne Abou-Rahme and Basel Abbas. 💜 As part of the Call & Response Series, Prisoners of Love: Until The Sun Of Freedom (2025) and HUM (2020) are on view til September 6th, centring the role of political prisoners as leaders with Palestinian prisoners historically having been a compass and their freedom, a fundamental tether to our liberation. This year, the exhibitions opened on April 18, during the global week of action, highlighting the 10,000 Palestinians of all ages held in Israeli prisons with last months’ bill legalizing their execution. Also on view in my solo exhibition, There Is a Fountain Even If Pale That Flows Beneath Us All, are an expansive series of sound studies; drawings, painted works and textiles, handbound artist books and leporellos, created alongside sound chamber designs for HUM over the years, many shown for the first time. Special thanks to Gabi Ngcobo (Director) for her searing vision in bringing us altogether in the first place, for the tireless support of the KunstInstituut Melly team, Curator of Programs Rosa de Graaf, Curatorial Assistant Aïda Sidhoum and Operations Manager, Jereon Laven. Last but not least, a huge thank you to Hera Chan (Guest Curator) for her trust, rigour and artist centred approach to exhibition making. I’m proud of us all that this particular program of exhibitions was able to contribute an architectural transformation at KunstInstituut Melly that in the future can continue to convene works on the second floor like never before. Big love for you all! 💜❤️💜 @kunstinstituutmelly @gabi_ngcobo_official @ruanne.ar @basel.abb @hera_sc @rosanicodegraaf @aidadhoum @visuology_nl Photo Credit: Kristien Daem, Liza Wolters, Aad Hoogendoorn

Eternal 🙏 [Kalpa] was, for a time, site-specific to overseas Chinese Taoist Jui Tui Shrine, 1980s Mellow Pillow Hotel, red light district Poon Phol Night Plaza, Former Bangkok Bank of Commerce which contributed to the onslaught of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, fresh market that never opened Yi Teng Complex, intertidal area in Saphan Hin Park, the defunct Pearl Bowl, opera house of San Chao Kathu Shrine, former Liquor Distillery, old shop houses, former Chao Fah power station which fueled all the Ming in Kathu, scenic vistas, the mangrove forest

In 2004, a great wave swept across the Indian Ocean, from Phuket to Sri Lanka (see Nirmala Dutt’s Tsunami series). Then in 2011, the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami struck Japan. In its wake, Ryuichi Sakamoto found the piano pictured above in a school gymnasium. In Phuket, the piano found itself once again in a gymnasium—the Saphan Hin 4000 Seat Municipal Gymnasium. It plays itself, an object “tuned by nature.” More tales from @thailand_biennale artists on the road, seafaring, sensorial and more proof of our triumph over the sentient side effects of our sites courtesy of @widewalker

5 months, 50+ commissions, 65 artists, and 20 venues later, some pretty pictures courtesy of Ringo Cheung, with more incoming. Never thought I’d become a regular of Phuket and its abandoned sites that are post-tin mining, post-tourism, post-sex work, post-industrial, post-commercial. Ultimately, this is dedicated to the docents and the multiple timelines and lifelines of the @thailand_biennale Eternal [Kalpa]—may our tales contribute but a small part to the fantastical and (sometimes) irrational oral history of this island

Thank you @voguephilippines for the feature on redefining the uniform. Happy to share this with our collaborators in Phuket and Manila 💚🧡

I stand in solidarity with the signatories of ANGA’s (@angalliance ) demands and support their call to exclude Israel from the Venice Biennale. The widening war we are witnessing did not appear overnight. It grows from years of normalizing Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its 78 year occupation of Palestine, allowing institutions to treat it as an exception. Culture must not provide cover for genocide and the brutal imperial aggression being unleashed on Iran and Lebanon. No genocide pavilion. No artwashing in our name. (Share this post to voice your support)

Oototol arrives to us entirely through aftermath: a body of paintings, fragments of recollection, and an unstable archive of snapshots. An androgynous character in a nondescript military uniform moves throughout almost all of his works, not as an individual subject but as a repeated condition. In Bali, he made paintings from the 1990s to 2009, with a selection drawing from American interventions in Iraq and scenes from Iran. Thank you @jntrtdj for the invitation to write about this artist enraptured by militaristic enigmas, and to @ibrahimsoetomo and @r_o_g_e_r___n_e_l_s_o_n for their Rashomon reconstructions or visions into his practice as well— now on view at @rohprojects and @komunitas_salihara