The 61st Venice Art Biennale has unveiled its international jury made up of five personalities from contemporary art. The edition stands out for its exclusively female training, unlike the mixed juries selected in 2024 and 2022. The whole brings together profiles from Brazil, Thailand, Spain, the United States and Switzerland, active in the scenes of the Global South, in feminist studies and transnational curatorial practices.
The presidency of the jury is entrusted to Solange Oliveira Farkas. Founder and artistic director of the Associação Cultural Videobrasil, she is a figure on the stages of the Global South. She has participated in events such as the Sharjah Biennale, Dak’Art, the Jakarta International Video Festival or FUSO. She directed the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia between 2007 and 2010.
The jury also includes Zoe Butt. An Australian curator, writer and teacher based in Thailand, she founded the in-tangible institute, dedicated to the development of curatorial practices and artistic ecosystems in Southeast Asia. She also runs deCentral. She has worked in Ho Chi Minh City, notably with The Factory Contemporary Arts Center and Sàn Art, as well as in Beijing, within the Long March Project. She participated in the Sharjah Biennale 14.
Elvira Dyangani Ose is also on the jury. A Spanish curator of Equatorial Guinean origin, she directed the MACBA in Barcelona until 2026 and was appointed artistic director of the Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial 2026-2027. She has held positions at Tate Modern, London Showroom and Creative Time. She curated the 8th International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Gothenburg.
Marta Kuzma is a professor at the Yale School of Art who led the school as dean from 2016 to 2021, becoming the first woman to hold this position at a 150-year-old institution. Before Yale, she was chancellor of the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, director of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, and founder of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art in Kyiv. She participated in Documenta 13, Manifesta 5 and the Nordic Pavilion of the Biennale Arte 2009.
Giovanna Zapperi is the fifth juror. Professor of contemporary art history at the University of Geneva, she devotes her research to feminist epistemologies, feminist practices in the visual arts and the links between gender, body and visual culture. She is the author of several works, including The artist is a woman. The modernity of Marcel Duchamp (2012) and Art and Feminism in Postwar Italy (2020).
The jury will be responsible for awarding the various prizes of the Biennale. In 2024, the Golden Lion for best national participation went to Australia, represented by Archie Moore and his kith and kin project. The Golden Lion for the best participant in the international exhibition was awarded to the Mataaho Collective, a Māori collective founded in 2012 in Aotearoa, New Zealand. The Silver Lion for Promising Young Participant went to Karimah Ashadu, a London-born artist living between Hamburg and Lagos.
The 2024 list included two Golden Lions for lifetime achievement: one to Anna Maria Maiolino, an Italian artist of Brazilian origin, and the other to Nil Yalter, a Turkish artist based in Paris. The jury awarded a special mention to the national participation of Kosovo, as well as two other special mentions to Samia Halaby and La Chola Poblete.
