SYDNEY.- The Biennale of Sydney has announced further artists, project highlights, and initial programming for its 25th edition, Rememory, being presented free to the public from March 14 to June 14, 2026.

Led by internationally acclaimed curator 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 that have been erased or repressed. By engaging with Rememory, artists from across the world and within Australia reflect on their own roots while engaging with Sydney’s communities and histories, exploring global themes that connect us.

This 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 diverse diasporas that shape Australia today. A dedicated program for children and young audiences will provide space for these stories to be passed on to future generations.

Announced today are an additional 16 artists and collectives for the 2026 edition, bringing the current number to 53, with the full list to be announced in the coming months. The artists come from 31 countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Guatemala, India, the United States, Argentina, Lebanon, France, Ireland, Ethiopia, Algeria, and Taiwan.

Hoor Al Qasimi, Artistic Director, said: “Working with artists to bring Rememory to life, I am struck by the profound timeliness of this edition. The Biennale has always been a site for the most vital, urgent, and resonant art of its moment. Yet this edition feels especially present, even insistent—an irony, perhaps, as Rememory turns to the written, visual, and oral histories of culture, context, family, and country. I am deeply honoured to collaborate with such extraordinary artists, to accompany them in their processes, and to collectively honour Toni Morrison’s words. Together, we illuminate the overlooked and forgotten histories upon which the world is built.”

First artworks for Rememory announced

Internationally acclaimed interdisciplinary artist Nikesha Breeze presents an immense new immersive and interactive installation titled Living Histories at White Bay Power Station. Working from a global African diasporic and Afro-Futurist perspective, Breeze explores first-hand accounts of enslaved African Americans in the Antebellum South. Unfolding among large-scale fabric columns crafted to resemble the African Baobab tree, Living Histories amplifies these lost voices as an act of archival reclamation.

Painter Nancy Yukuwal McDinny will produce her largest work to date at White Bay Power Station. Giving voice to the experiences of the Gulf of Carpentaria’s traditional custodians since colonisation, McDinny documents the historical and contemporary resonance of conflict between First Nations communities and colonial forces—from the First Fleet to modern-day mining. Vast in scale, this new mural will stand as both monument, memorial, and mission statement.

Eritrean artist Nahom Teklehaimanot presents three new large-scale canvases at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Titled This Is My Silence You Name the Sound, the work speaks to the poignant experience of living as a refugee. Using his signature collage style, these figurative works understand displacement as a balancing act between exile and solidarity.

Senior Anangu (Pitjantjatjara) artist Frank Young will lead a monumental installation of hand-carved spears for the latest iteration of the Kulata Tjuta (Many Spears) Project at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Kulata Tjuta, meaning “many spears,” is an ongoing project of cultural maintenance that began in the Amata community in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. This latest version marks fifteen years of the project, with three generations of spear-makers highlighting the importance of maintaining Indigenous traditions and knowledge through contemporary art.

Artists Behrouz Boochani, Hoda Afshar and Vernon Ah Kee, present a multi-channel video work at Campbelltown Arts Centre as part of their newly commissioned Code Black/Riot project. Centring the voices and experiences of Indigenous youth living in detention Code Black/Riot confronts the persistence of colonial policies through the inhumane logic of Australia’s incarceration system.

Lebanese filmmakers and artists Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige create a new work exploring patterns of human migration. The installation is based on the story of a group of friends who dream of changing their lives and decide to leave their neighbourhood for Australia, ultimately reaching Christmas Island. Their migration crosses the path of the annual mass red crab migration, which sees millions of large crabs emerge from the forest and make their way to the ocean to breed. The immersive multimedia installation at Campbelltown Arts Centre explores constant movement, migrations, dreams, and imaginaries of utopian “elsewheres.”

Respected Yindjibarndi Elder Wendy Hubert expands her arts practice to create a large-scale native plant garden celebrating ancestral knowledge at Penrith Regional Gallery. Focusing on native plants used for food, medicine, and ceremonial purposes, the garden will be a space for communities to gather, learn, and yarn.

Monica Rani-Rudhar presents a vibrant and poetic new multi-channel video installation exploring the colonial legacies of both trauma and resistance embodied in family stories, heirlooms, and bloodlines. This work at Penrith Regional Gallery uses Rani-Rudhar’s personal history to interrogate the dual ideas of inheritance and intergenerational trauma.

Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland)-based artist Benjamin Work, of Tongan and Orcadian/Shetlander hohoko (lineage), presents a new commission at Chau Chak Wing Museum. Symptomatic of a sprawling colonial project throughout the region, archival records of Tonga during the 19th century show Work’s ancestors merging Western clothing and materials with traditional Tongan dress. Acknowledging these developments as a means to maintain autonomy under annexation pressure, this new work extends these adaptations in an innovative sculptural tribute to the endurance of culture.

At Chau Chak Wing Museum, Warraba Weatherall builds on his established practice of challenging institutional power structures. Across wall-based sculptural works recalling both museum filing cabinets and church confessional booths, he reframes and critiques narratives behind archival documentation of Indigenous cultural material, specifically from his Country of Kamilaroi, held in collections of Australian museums. Weatherall challenges the significance placed on museum records, offering a critical view of which voices are truly preserved within cultural institutions.

London-based Lebanese artist and musician Joseph Namy presents a new iteration of his work Automobile, a large-scale multi-channel sound installation that uses local cars fitted with modified stereo systems as his instruments. First realised in Beirut in 2012, each presentation of Automobile engages local communities of auto-enthusiasts to create an energetic gathering space—for the people, with the people. The work will be presented as a free performance (registration required) in Parramatta Town Square on March 21, 2026.