25th Biennale of Sydney
March 14–June 14, 2026
The Biennale of Sydney has today announced further artists, artworks and public programming highlights for its 25th edition, titled Rememory, being presented free to the public from March 14 to June 14, 2026.
With the program curated by internationally acclaimed Artistic Director Hoor Al Qasimi, the 25th Biennale of Sydney: Rememory, takes its title from celebrated author Toni Morrison, exploring the intersection of memory and history as a means of revisiting, reconstructing, and reclaiming histories. Through Rememory, artists from Australia and around the world reflect on their own roots while engaging with Sydney and its surrounding communities and histories, exploring global themes that connect us.
The edition will highlight marginalised narratives, share untold stories, and inspire audiences to rethink how memory shapes identity and belonging, amplifying stories from First Nations communities, and the divergent diasporas that shape Australia today. A dedicated program for children and young audiences will provide space and exploration for these stories to be passed on to the next generations.
Announced today are an additional 33 artists and collectives for the 2026 edition, bringing the number of presenting artists, collaborations and collectives to 83. The artists come from 37 countries including Australia, New Zealand, Guatemala, India, USA, Argentina, Lebanon, France, Ireland, Ethiopia, Algeria and Taiwan.
Audiences will experience dynamic artworks, large-scale installations and site-specific projects by international artists such as Nikesha Breeze, Dread Scott, Nahom Teklehaimanot, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Joe Namy and Sandra Monterroso, alongside Australian artists including Abdul Abdullah, Dennis Golding, Helen Grace, Wendy Hubert, Richard Bell and Merilyn Fairskye & Michiel Dolk.
Artistic Director Hoor Al Qasimi said: “Rememory is shaped by artists and cultural practitioners who understand memory as something living—where history informs the present and repeats itself in different forms. Through their practices, histories that have been fragmented, erased or suppressed are revisited and reassembled, not as linear accounts but as shared and evolving acts of remembering. Drawing on personal, familial and collective experiences, the artists in this edition reveal how the past remains present, inviting audiences to engage actively with memory as a space of responsibility, reflection and possibility.”
Artworks for Rememory
The great Ngurrara Canvas II, by the Ngurrara artists of the Great Sandy Desert Western Australia, is to have its final presentation away from the artist’s country as there are no future plans for it to travel again. Presented at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the 80 square meter floor canvas is one of the largest and most spectacular Aboriginal paintings, made by Western Desert artists. It was made in 1997, for presentation to the National Native Title Tribunal to demonstrate Ngurrara people’s connection to country for Native Title purposes. Traditional owners including two dance troupes will travel to Sydney for a special public performance.
Argentinian artist Gabriel Chaile draws on his Spanish, Afro-Arabic, and Indigenous Candelaria heritage to present a monumental adobe clay sculptural oven, hand-built and air-dried onsite at White Bay Power Station. Interested in the relationships around food and community activities, Chaile’s oven will be activated during the opening weekend and other key moments of the festival to feed registered visitors to the site in an intra-Latin American collaboration with Sydney's Andina Peruvian Cuisine.
Melbourne-based textile artist Ema Shin exhibits her largest work to date, a two-meter-tall 3D handwoven heart, at Chau Chak Wing Museum. Inspired by a treasured family tree kept by her grandfather spanning 32 generations and only including the names of male family members and women who have given birth to sons, Shin's works are a meditation on the historic and cultural erasure of women, and a tribute to the women who are absent from her family history.
Canadian and French artist Kapwani Kiwanga presents a selection of floral arrangements from the Flowers of Africa series at the Art Gallery of NSW. Through extensive research into archives, Kiwanga locates images representing defining moments of independence throughout the African continent and recreates the floral arrangements featured. As they wilt, the work is transformed into a reminder of the fallibility and false-fixedness of the archive.
In a new sculptural sound installation at White Bay Power Station, Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota artist Cannupa Hanska Luger literally and metaphorically gives voice to our animal kin. Using a series of ceramic whistles shaped into the likeness of the threatened native dingo, Luger's new work will howl throughout the space, acting as a vessel for First Nations voices.
Interdisciplinary Lebanese artist Mounira Al Solh presents two activations for the 25th Biennale of Sydney. At Blouza Hall in Granville on 15 March, Al Solh presents a community-based performance installation featuring the creation of a large vat of tabbouleh to feed attendees, exploring ideas of gathering, food rituals, musicality, rhythm, and tabbouleh as a site of resistance, alongside an iteration of her ongoing drawing series I strongly believe in our right to be frivolous, working with members of the Arab diaspora in Australia displayed at Campbelltown Arts Centre.
At Lewers: Penrith Regional Gallery, Guatemalan artist Fernando Poyón presents a new sculptural installation made up of 1,500 cedarwood pencils to resemble milpas (corn stalks). Focusing on the wellspring of Indigenous knowledge passed down, and nourished, by the artist’s grandmother, mother and the Earth itself, the work sprouts in representation of a culture constantly renewing and shifting with the cycles of the seasons as much as the changes of the contemporary world.
UK-born Norway-based artist Nora Adwan presents a new ceramic installation at Lewers: Penrith Regional Gallery where sound travels around the space through 40 speakers concealed in ceramic pomegranate sculptures, steered by humidity sensors responding to the outdoor climate, to create a unique meditative space.
Acclaimed Vietnamese American artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen's practice explores the power of memory and its potential to act as a form of political resistance. The artist ruminates on the post-traumatic reverberations of the Vietnam War by presenting his film The Unburied Sounds of a Troubled Horizon at Chau Chak Wing Museum.
American artist Dread Scott will present his photographic series Lockdown (2000, 2026) at Campbelltown Arts Centre. Over a series of black and white portraits and recorded conversations, made during brief meetings in US prisons, Lockdown tells the story of a society that imprisons over two million people from the viewpoint of those locked down.
View the full list of artists for the 25th Biennale of Sydney, Rememory, on the Biennale of Sydney website.
