echoes
Act I. In Minor Keys

echoes is a curatorial project conceived within We Exhibit and curated by Francesca Carol Rolla. It brings into relation art, culture, and memory through encounters and practices of listening, where voices from contemporary art, critical thought, and research intersect.

The project emerges from the need to observe and accompany artistic processes as they take shape—where ideas, genealogies of thought, influences, and cultural contexts converge to enable the emergence of artworks. At a moment when cultural production privileges speed of circulation and the simplification of public discourse, echoes creates a slower, more reflective space of attention in which artistic thought can unfold over time.

At its core, echoes proposes a curatorial methodology grounded in listening. Dialogue functions as a research tool through which the emergence and articulation of ideas within artistic processes can be traced and understood.

Conversations are conceived as sites of shared thinking, bringing together invited voices in an open exchange of reflections, experiences, and research trajectories. These encounters unfold across multiple formats—public conversations, informal exchanges, editorial texts, audio and video recordings, or other forms of transmission.

From these dialogues, traces gradually form an evolving archive—texts, recordings, and editorial contributions—that both documents and activates the complex relations between practices, generations, and diverse cultural contexts.

Act I. In Minor Keys, the first chapter of the project, emerges from this research framework. It is informed by the curatorial vision of Koyo Kouoh and the title of the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale (2026). This lineage orients echoes toward modes of attention attuned to what often remains at the margins of visibility, unfolding within the more subtle and relational dimensions of artistic experience.

This first act unfolds over the course of the exhibition, accompanying the project throughout its duration.

Within this framework, echoes operates as an open field of research, where encounter becomes an infrastructure for cultural production, and dialogue generates ongoing resonances across artistic practices, temporalities, and geographies.