A drawing encounter: How's That? How's That?
Venice Biennale, 2026
The Giardini in July smells like cut grass and diesel from the vaporetti, and if you didn't know better you'd walk right past the Central Pavilion without guessing what's folded inside it. Through floor-to-ceiling windows, a room called Chimera holds a forest of totems — a hundred and fifty three hands built it, and not one of them could see what the others were making. That's the whole premise: you make your piece blind, it hangs and is connected to a stranger (like folding a paper as you pass it on in an exquisite corpse game), you trust what comes back. Somewhere in that forest is a drawing of mine, still being finished by people I'll never meet, in a language I don't speak, a month after I set it down and walked away.
When we entered the Giardini grand hall, there was Kouoh’s curatorial statement that included:
“The premise is that poetry liberates and that people make beauty together. The proposition is an experience that is sensory, not didactic; renewing, not exhausting; and fortifying for the work ahead.”
The first room in the Giardini is a high space filled with paintings and sculptures by Issa Samb and Werewere Liking. The works bring on a wave of humanness. Reminding me we are animal, spirit, wind, they all seem to move and gather. In me rises a familiar fire…my love of art and why we make it. I grow, right there in that moment, I grow to trust myself as an artist. These folks gave their lives to making, gathering, gathering each other, gathering energy to create the changes they needed to see to live.
My dad and I had different views of art in my childhood, he saw it as a decoration, a frivolity, I saw it was essential to daily life. But I came around to his point of view. And then spent most of my life coming back to mine and finding ways to connect with him - my nonprofit ENGN is largely the result. I wanted art to be practical. And I now know so many aspects of creativity and making are practical, but at that time, 14+ years ago, when ENGN was forming, I saw art, more closely to how he saw it, extra, not essential. This biennale was full of the essential…essential stories.
My friends know I don’t like story…to be a story for me, it must be an evolution of something real, present and celebrated. It is not about the past, imaginary, entertainment, history, representation, important events or people. It must be told, not written, it must be shared, heard, live…not recorded. But here I break my own rule…to enlist your coming around and engaging with my process. (If you don’t reach out, I’ve failed.) I felt the art in these rooms was alive and living like the mattress we sleep on, holding what makes up our bodies, caringly.
My Drawing, How’s that? How’s that?, Ink on Paper, 2026 is here.
These labels are kinda lies, but they are convenient to refer to elements in the drawing:
Past: It creates a space enough to hold everything the past refuses to let go of. Grief lives up there, and so does everything worth remembering. These moments are real. Let them drift.
Present: Lower down, three spaces sit heavy and sure of themselves. They don't apologize for being obvious. This is the present: hard-edged, already named, already here. You know these forms because you're living inside them right now, whether you like it or not. They are planes of buildings to fit the life you are living - right now.
Future: Between the reverie and the certainty, there's a shape that hasn't decided what it is yet…it’s a network in the center. It’s a ghost. A fragmented, weight that is floating, gestural and cutting growth. It isn't finished. It won't be finished for a while. I think of it as the part of the drawing that's still asking a question — how's that, how's that — the way you'd ask after setting something down and not quite trusting it to hold. That unresolved middle is where I keep the hope. Not because the future is guaranteed to be good. Because it's still being made, by hands I'll never meet, the way this whole room was made — one contribution folded into the next, a chimera assembled from a hundred and fifty three different kinds of grief and joy and resilient bonds.
A month in, while writing this, I think about the people walking through that room in a language I don't speak, standing in front of my drawing, having a chance to weave into my work. The three times presented above are only wordy placeholders for what is really growing…an unsettling, chaosmosis…a generative, regenerative? tool to fortify our next steps — a hand to hold.
That's the whole of it. Not a monument. A living thing, still growing, inviting another being to smile, come sit a while.
Be well, Tom
My drawing, "How's that? How's that?" is part of Denniston Hill's installation Chimera at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia — In Minor Keys, curated by Koyo Kouoh.
On view May 9 – Nov. 22, 2026, Giardini's Central Pavilion.
Credits: Design: Büro Koray Duman Architects Graphics: Commonwealth Projects Tech Design: Pierre Briet Curatorial Assistant: Sofia Reeser del Rio Registrar: Autumn Beck Local Architects: Eiletz Ortigas Architects Installation Team: Robert Vinas Jr., Damien Young, Jacopo Scarpis, Yuval Pudik, Diana Restrepo Logistics Support: Kelsey Leland, Lacey Romano Research and Translations: Maria Wilson Special Thanks: Clyde Nichols, Sarah Rentz, Kevin Reuning Supporters: LYRA Foundation, A&L Berg Foundation, Marian Goodman Gallery, Miyoung Lee, White Cube Gallery