From May 9 to November 22, 2026

Silvia Canton is among the exhibiting artists at the National Pavilion of the United Republic of Tanzania at the 61st International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia in the project: Minor Frequencies: The Inner Life of a Nation.

Curated by Lorna Benedict Mashiba and Martina Cavallarin

Exhibition venue: Supernova, Cannaregio 3218/A – Fondamenta della Sensa Headquarters and Gervasuti Foundation: Palazzo Canova, Cannaregio 4998 – Calle Lunga Santa Caterina.

Executive Producer: Alessandro Corona
Project Manager: Matteo Scavetta
Production: MilleEventi, Venice & Everywhere
Organization: Techne Art Service and PRS SRL Impresa Color Cooperativa Sociale

The National Pavilion of the United Republic of Tanzania at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia presents the exhibition Minor Frequencies: The Inner Life Of A Nation.

The opening of Thursday the 7th of May, at Gervasuti Foundation at Supernova, features a Press Conference at 5:30 pm, followed by a guided tour of the exhibition with the curators, accompanied by the artists, and to conclude a welcome cocktail. The opening is reserved for accredited press, visitors with the Biennale invitation to pre-opening and Biennale Card and the guests of the Pavilion who have confirmed their attendance while seats last (RSVP tanzania.nationalpavilion@gmail.com).

With Minor Frequencies, the United Republic of Tanzania resonates as one of the frequencies that animate the Biennale Arte 2026. The project invites us to adopt a lateral posture, to pay attention to the background noise, beyond grand proclamations. For the minor is not reductive. The minor is intimate and precious. It carries memory, breath, and resistance. Tanzania’s National Participation is in tune with this minor chorus, reverberating the sentiment of the Nation not through slogans, but through whispered perceptions, allowing it to emerge as a sensitive, organic presence.

The curatorial and exhibition project revolves with great harmony around the Tanzanian artists’ artworks. These express internal frequencies, each one echoing a line of research: the Body by Turakella Editha Gyindo; the Gesture by Lazaro Samuel; the Archive by Valerie Asiimwe Amani; the Mind by Amani Abeid.

The centrality of these artworks acts as a tuning fork for the polyphonic chorus of the artists from plural geographies who, through their creative interventions, expand the inner life of the Tanzanian Nation. Thanks to formal and linguistic differences, the exhibition converges in a shared artistic kaleidoscope, a space of inquiry that favours interiority, opacity and listening over spectacle. This way, all the artworks not only represent the Nation, but also interpret its deepest dimension, contributing to amplify Tanzania’s role on the international Contemporary Art scene.

In Minor Frequencies dialogue and confrontation become prolific when it proves necessary to move beyond the paradigm of constructing identity and cultural representativeness, in order to give voice to the artwork, conceived as a proactive synthesis of the method for reading geographical, social, and cultural affinities and differences. It is about wandering through places that admit no distance, for they belong to the “magical territory” of art. From Tanzania to Venice – and back again – the architecture is mobile. It is composed of derivations, analogies, and filiations intrinsic to the acceptance of a nomadism that “is extended through a relationship.”

In the venue of the exhibition, the artworks inhabit a scenographic structure that is orchestrated through a syncopated and non-linear rhythm, and punctuated by backdrops that host multidisciplinary installations, collages, polyglot writings, lights, sounds, graphic interventions, painting, and sculpture. The aim is to position the Tanzanian artists’ lateral gaze as a privileged point of observation, in an effort to shift and multiply perspectives through the intersection and the welcoming of alternative visions within the «totalité-monde». The participation of the United Republic of Tanzania in the Biennale Arte 2026 represents a sign of continuity with the previous edition of 2024. While in the last edition the Pavilion occupied a limited space, this year the exhibition takes place in a large area of industrial archaeology, positioning itself on equal level with the world’s major nations.