The 61st Venice Biennale, the world’s oldest contemporary art exhibition, opened its preview week in turmoil after its jury resigned rather than judge artists from Israel and Russia. The walkout — unprecedented in the exhibition’s history — stripped the Biennale of the professional peer panel that awards its coveted Golden Lion prizes, forcing organizers to hand the selection of winners to the public for the first time.
Tensions were already visible on Tuesday as the Giardini, the Biennale’s storied exhibition grounds, became a stage for the wars the art world is struggling to navigate. Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadryova stood beside a truck that had carried “The Origami Deer,” a sculpture that once stood in a park in Pokrovsk, in the Donbas region of Ukraine, from the eastern front to Venice. The work was evacuated in 2024 with the front line just five kilometers away. “You can’t stay neutral in these times,” said Ksenia Malykh, a co-curator of the Ukrainian Pavilion. “You can’t be neutral when people are dying every day because of Russians.”
Just meters away, the Russian Pavilion opened its doors for the previews only, with an Argentine DJ playing house music and an open bar upstairs near a flowering tree. The pavilion will not be open to the public when the Biennale begins its six-and-a-half-month run on Saturday. Malykh called the Biennale’s decision to allow Russia to open its pavilion “a false attempt to stay neutral,” adding, “They say that art is beyond politics, but they are using art as a weapon in a hybrid war in Europe.”
The exhibition’s jury had said before resigning that it would not award prizes to countries whose leaders are under investigation by the International Criminal Court. The move, which isolated Israel and Russia, effectively dismantled the prize structure before the previews began. Without a jury, there will be no Golden Lion for best national pavilion or best participant in the main curated exhibition — honors that have led some to call the Biennale the Olympics of art. Instead, visitors to both the Giardini and Arsenale sites will choose two winners, to be awarded on the closing day, November 22.
“It’s an important moment,” Malykh said of the lost professional prizes. “If the prize is given by the public, it’s as if the Biennale came to Eurovision. It’s not a professional institution after that.”
Israeli artist Belu-Simion Fainaru, standing in front of his Kabbalah-rooted installation, said he thought the jury’s decision was “a fair one.” “I should be treated as an equal artist, and I should not be discriminated because of my race, that I am a Jew, and not because of my nationality or passport,” he said. “I have to be seen as I am. I am an artist that wants to show my art, and I have the right to be evaluated.” The Biennale, Fainaru said, should be “a place where you can feel safe to create and do whatever you believe in.”
Marie Helene Pereira, one of the five curators now leading the main exhibition “In Minor Keys” after the death of curator Koyo Kouoh, said the turmoil had exposed the strain on the pavilion system. “I think what has been contested very much is the existence of the nation state within the space of the exhibition,” she said. “We can see how much that can bring tension, especially in the midst of the political chaos (in which) we find ourselves.” She said the moment required rethinking institutions so they “cater more to artists and artmaking,” though she emphasized that art should not be devoid of politics.
Russia’s participation cost the Biennale 2 million euros ($2.3 million) in European Union funding over three years. The Biennale defended its decision, arguing that any country with relations with Italy is free to open a pavilion, a position that has put it at odds with the government in Rome. The official catalog carried a placeholder where Russia’s text should have been, noting that the country’s participation was “under review” at the time of publication.
A group of Palestinian demonstrators marched through the Giardini on Tuesday wearing the names of artists killed in Gaza. More protests were expected as preview week continued, with the six-month exhibition set to open to the public on May 10.