2026 WHITNEY BIENNIAL - INITIAL THOUGHTS
BY YAYA BROWN
Install view: 2026 Whitney Biennial
After seeing the 2026 Whitney Biennial, I asked my mentor, Gary Stephan, for his thoughts. He said it was weak. Admittedly, he is a hard person to impress. He's a highly intelligent older artist that has seen lots of work. His take was this: the 2026 Whitney Biennial is a showcase of shallow ideas executed with immense skill.
Most works in the show deal with ideas that are not hard to understand. The Kekahi Wahi and Bradley Capello video is about the genocide of indigenous people in Hawaii - a colonized landscape beset by tourism. It's a satirical video about how past atrocities on the islands are glorified, portrayed as an 80's workout video. Sexual imagery is used to emphasize the forced penetration of native lands by expansionists. It's easy to understand, even if you're not an avid art consumer. Another set of paintings by Akira Ikezoe show wonderful short narratives about anthropomorphic creatures working around climate destroying settings like a nuclear power plant. The themes of life, work, and death as well as climate change and ecological issues are plainly visible. Both of these have easy-to-follow narratives and easy-to-understand concepts. Their forms are unchallenging and the consumption of their 2-sentence concept is quick and painless.
There seems to be many examples of work in this show that have their meanings wrapped up in a bow and handed to you as you pass by. For me, this is a tremendous accomplishment. I am very excited about the approachability of the art in this show; anyone can experience new things that could affect their perspective or thinking. There are plenty of works that require a much deeper dive, but when looking at the show as a whole, I'm very pleased with the addition of the short and sweet. There's room in the art world for the quick and dirty.
An experience that has formed my excitement for this type of art show was when I took my parents to see The Clock by Christian Marclay. One of the top 100 artworks of the 21st century according to ARTnews, The Clock is a 24-hour video montage that compiles movie and TV clips that depict clocks or time passing. When I saw it for the first time I sat in the front row of the viewing room at MoMA for 30 minutes, completely captivated. It was such an interesting way to conceptualize time and see how media changes the reality of time to further its agenda or control our perception. I was able to ride the high of its genius for days.
My parents, on the other hand, never noticed that the times shown in the movie clips reflected what the actual time was. They simply enjoyed watching a compilation of movie clips. I left this experience with a newfound grievance for the art world's inability to educate its viewers more explicitly.
I don't mean to say that all art shows should have a step-by-step guide on what everything means and represents. There could just be optional something that can help guide those who feel lost. What if my parents, when they were about to enter The Clock, were prompted to take notice of what time it was? A simple wall text saying, "take notice of what time it is right now" outside the door could've made a world of difference and allowed my parents to have the same "aha" moment I did.
I think the current Whitney Biennial, for all its apparent weaknesses, is a step in the right direction. Having so many pieces of accessible concepts acts as a way to bring in the unsuspecting and unfamiliar eye into the world of contemporary art. I find tremendous value in this. Exposing people to capital-A Art is a passion of mine. Art has done so much for me and for the world; I hate seeing it ignored. I hate the perception that contemporary art is nothing but a cash grab or snobbery contest. There is life-changing art in the world, and it shouldn't lie behind a wall of experience, prestige, or education.
