#grief-and-memory

#grief-and-memory

In December 2024, art curator Koyo Kouoh became the first African woman selected to curate the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. She proposed an introspective and sensitive approach to the exhibition, shaped by themes of grief, memory, spirituality, and global exhaustion. Following her premature passing in May 2025, the Biennale decided to continue with the same curatorial project, titled In Minor Keys.

At night in New York, builds worlds out of voltage and digital wavelengths. His story begins in northwest Arkansas, where Nicholas Long grew up among his father's guitars and the hum of Passing Note Studio. A Depeche Mode concert in 1991 flipped the switch, sending him home with a Roland Juno 106 that became his permanent obsession. From then on, he spoke in oscillators and filters, carrying the studio's name forward after his father's death as a gesture of memory and continuity.

Hynes came back to England to be by the bedside of his mother in hospital, and stayed at home a while after she died in 2023. This tragic disruptionproduced his fifth full-length release, Essex Honey, a clear contender for album of the year. It's a record grounded by grief but fizzing with the memory flashes that came with returning home to the edge of Essex; the record that sounds most like the place he left almost two decades ago.