Koyo Kouoh, the late artistic director of the 2026 Venice Biennale who sadly died before the opening of the world’s most watched international contemporary art exhibition, left behind a set of profound curatorial cues.

She wanted “In Minor Keys”, the title of this year’s Biennale, to be a place where art slows you down enough to hear the voices of the ignored and the silenced, where differences can gather in “convivial collectivity” and views are not screamed combatively.

But this Biennale has been anything but quiet, from the daily anti-Russia and anti-Israel protests to the urgent alarms about planetary doom issued without subtlety or apology at Florentina Holzinger’s Austria pavilion, which has most certainly stolen the limelight.

There are exceptions, however. The Hong Kong exhibition, titled “Fermata”, meaning “stop” in Italian, is like one of those obedient students who eagerly follow the rules to the letter in an otherwise unruly classroom. It is certainly in a “minor key”. But also like a submissive student sitting quietly in the back row, it does not make perceptible statements.

On the first public day of the Biennale, on May 9, I found three visitors mellowed to the point of dozing off in the dimly lit back room at Campo della Tana, the regular venue for Hong Kong’s collateral exhibitions.

This is where Kingsley Ng Siu-king’s Laundry Nocturne (2026) is being staged. Because Ng intended to create a rest lounge for the frantic Biennale crowd – complete with a padded floor and plenty of cushions – it is mission accomplished.