Duchamp's Expanded Ready-Made at the 61st Venice Biennale

The 61st Venice Biennale, curated by Koyo Kouoh, reinterprets Marcel Duchamp's ready-made as an expanded curatorial methodology. The exhibition, titled "In Minor Keys," opens with Duchamp's figure as a theoretical cameo, explicitly referencing the ready-made genealogy. Simultaneously, at Ca' Corner della Regina, Fondazione Prada presents "Helter Skelter" featuring Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince, where the ready-made is again declared a key interpretive matrix. The article argues that the ready-made has evolved from object to presence, now applied to subjects, communities, minorities, vernacular traditions, and cultural heritage. This shift transforms curatorial action into a legitimizing procedure, moving beyond Duchamp's original destabilization. In "Helter Skelter," the ready-made operates on visual imagination, selecting saturated cultural icons from American suburbia, Whiteness, Blackness, cinematic iconography, and media stereotypes. Nicolas Bourriaud's post-production concept is updated as critical reactivation. The ready-made becomes a grammar of contemporaneity, managing cultural visibility within the global art system, as per Boris Groys's notion of curated contemporary art.