Image: Alfredo Jaar, ‘The End of the World (2023–2024)’, Biennale Arte 2026, Arsenale, Venice. Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia
Alfredo Jaar’s ‘The End of the World (2023–2024)’ is on view at the Arsenale in ‘In Minor Keys’, the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, which runs from 9 May to 22 November 2026 across the Giardini and Arsenale venues, other locations in Venice and Forte Marghera. The exhibition was titled and conceived by Koyo Kouoh; La Biennale states that it decided, with the full support of Kouoh’s family, to carry out the exhibition exactly as she conceived and defined it.
The work itself is small. Ten of the minerals most critical to contemporary technology — cobalt, rare earths, copper, tin, nickel, lithium, manganese, coltan, germanium and platinum — are pressed into a cube four centimetres square, set at the centre of a soaring, cathedral-like space so that the Arsenale becomes part of the piece. The Biennale’s presentation reads the cube as a condensation of strip mines, deep-sea extraction and the geopolitics of the green transition and of war. Admission is with a Biennale ticket.
Jaar’s practice spans photography, film, architecture and installation. Photo Elysée, which is showing him concurrently in Lausanne, describes him as one of our era’s most culturally, politically and socially committed artists, and identifies his 1994 journey to Rwanda, where he witnessed the genocide firsthand, as an experience that radically changed his life and his work.
The Venice presentation follows several earlier appearances by Jaar at the Biennale. According to Photo Elysée, he exhibited there in 1986, 2007, 2009 and 2013. His wider exhibition history includes presentations at documenta in Kassel in 1987 and 2002, as well as more than 80 solo exhibitions. Jaar received the Hasselblad Award in 2020, the IV Premi Mediterrani Albert Camus in 2024 and the Prix Pictet in 2025.
That concurrent Lausanne exhibition, ‘Inferno & Paradiso’, runs at Photo Elysée from 26 June to 1 November 2026: an immersive slide projection of 40 photographs by 20 reportage photographers, each asked for their most painful and most hopeful image, shown in alternating 20-minute cycles. First presented in Cortona in 2025, it was co-produced with the nonprofit On The Move for the Cortona On The Move festival, is curated by Paolo Woods and Kublaiklan, and is accompanied by a book from L’Artiere.
Jaar was born in 1956 and now lives and works in Lisbon after spending more than 40 years in New York, according to Photo Elysée. His work is held in collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Tate Modern in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. ‘The End of the World (2023–2024)’ remains on view at the Arsenale in Venice until 22 November 2026.
