Yoko Ono Joins the Roster for Mérida's First International Art Biennial

She’s 93, still making art, and now on the guest list for a major new event in Mexico’s southeast.

Yoko Ono is among 75 artists announced for the Bienal de Yucatán, the first large-scale international contemporary art biennial in Mexico — set to open in Mérida this November. No specific date for her appearance in Yucatán has been confirmed yet.

The event runs Nov. 26, 2026, through Feb. 28, 2027, across roughly 15 venues in Mérida’s Centro Histórico, with admission free throughout. The state’s Secretaría de la Cultura y las Artes (Sedeculta) is backing the project.

Ono’s inclusion draws obvious attention. A pioneer of conceptual and performance art since the 1960s, she is a central figure in the Fluxus movement and has shown work at the Tate Modern, the Centre Pompidou, and MoMA, among others. A major retrospective of her career — “Music of the Mind” — recently traveled from Tate Modern and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago to The Broad in Los Angeles. Her work has long explored themes of language, participation, and communication, which maps directly onto this biennial’s organizing idea.

That idea is Vocal. The 2026 edition takes language as its central subject — not just spoken words, but the full range of human communication: text, performance, poetry, and silence. Artistic director Abraham Cruzvillegas, one of Mexico’s most internationally recognized contemporary artists, has described the theme as a vehicle for the show rather than a thesis. He’s drawn on the Peninsula’s layered past — Maya languages, colonial contact, the Caste War — as source material. The name Yucatán itself, he noted at a May press conference in Mexico City, is thought to have emerged from a misunderstanding between Spanish colonizers and Maya speakers. “They kept saying ‘Yucatán, Yucatán,'” he said — something like “listen to how he speaks.”

The roster beside Ono includes Colombian artist Óscar Murillo, Syrian-British artist Wael Shawky, Chilean-born David Lamelas, Brazilian poet Lenora de Barros, and American sculptor Jimmie Durham, along with regional voices such as José Chi Dzul, Karen Kantún, Mauro Pech, Valeria Sánchez, and Max Castañón. Teresa Margolles, Minerva Cuevas, and Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija are also on the list.

The principal venue is the Casa de la Cultura del Mayab, a 16th-century former convent in the historic center. Additional sites include the Centro de Artes Visuales, the Biblioteca Yucatanense, the Museo de la Ciudad, and the Museo Pinacoteca Juan Gamboa Guzmán, among others. Site-specific works are also planned for Maní, a historic municipality about 90 kilometers (56 miles) southeast of Mérida.

Three parallel exhibitions will run alongside the main show. The Museo Jumex is presenting El don de lenguas, curated by Kit Hammonds, examining language as concept and physical organ. A second exhibition explores German-Mexican artist Mathias Goeritz and his influence on concrete poetry. A third, at the Centro Cultural Olimpo, traces the intersection of literature and visual art in 20th-century Mexican art.

The biennial is the vision of French-born art historian and collector Catherine Petitgas, who has served on the acquisitions committees of Tate and the Centre Pompidou and first visited Mérida in 2013. She has described it as the most ambitious project she has undertaken. Organizers are already planning future editions in 2028 and 2030.

For more on the program’s full scope, see Bienal de Yucatán 2026.