As the Venice Biennale opened Saturday in Venice, Italy, its contemporary-art lineup arrived amid diplomatic turbulence and street-level unrest, including a jury walkout that left the exhibition without its juried awards. The Biennale said the jury quit in protest over Russia’s and Israel’s participation, and that protesters clashed with police the day before outside the two countries’ pavilions.
With no Golden Lions after the jury’s departure, the Biennale shifted to a public vote for key honors. Visitors to the Giardini and Arsenale venues will be able to vote for the best national pavilion from 100 participants and for the best participant in the main curated show, “In Minor Keys,” using an anonymous email ballot, the Biennale said.
The Biennale’s planned schedule sets the announcement of winners for the closing day, Nov. 22. In the days leading up to the opening, demonstrations and related events also unfolded around the Russian and Israeli presences at the exhibition, reflecting a wider conflict that has already been drawn into cultural spaces.
On Friday, ahead of the opening, protesters objecting to Israel’s participation clashed with police, according to the account of the weekend’s opening. Earlier in the week, feminist groups from Ukraine and Russia converged on the Russian Pavilion, and Palestinians remembered artists killed in Gaza, events that also fed into the atmosphere around the Biennale.
The jury members, in explaining their decision to withdraw, limited their action to countries under investigation by the International Criminal Court for human rights abuses, the Biennale said. Some artists, however, argued that the approach should have included the United States as well.
Among the exhibition’s featured works and pavilions, organizers highlighted Koyo Kouoh’s “In Minor Keys” main show, including a towering red, feathered sculpture with beaded embroidery that greets visitors. The Biennale described the work as rooted in New Orleans Black Masking culture, created in a costume-like form meant to signal the show’s focus on minority perspectives, and it said Kouoh assembled 110 artists and artistic groups before her death a year ago. Marie Helene Pereira, one of the co-curators continuing Kouoh’s legacy, said: “She was someone who thought about making spaces for everyone to shine and we see it in her exhibition, we see it with ourselves.”
The account also pointed to Lubaina Himid’s British Pavilion show, “Predicting History: Testing Translation,” which uses brightly hued paintings focused on the dilemmas of newcomers. Himid, who was born in Zanzibar and has spent more than 70 years in Great Britain, described her work’s competing pressures through a quote about two architects deciding whether to build something that proves cultural contribution or something they can “escape in tomorrow.” In the Vatican pavilion offering, clergy leaders described the Mystic Gardens of the Discalced Carmelite order as a form of spiritual respite from “the world’s turmoil,” with visitors walking through a garden setting and listening to music connected to St. Hildegard of Bingen as reinterpreted by artists such as Brian Eno and Patti Smith.
Other featured projects included Austrian Pavilion work by Florentina Holzinger, presented as performances and installations using water and effluent as artistic medium, and an Israel Pavilion installation described as a meditation on love and war. In that Israel-themed installation, Belu-Simion Fainaru said he was “against boycott” and “for dialogue,” and he described the jury’s exclusion of Israel as a form of discrimination.
The British, Vatican, Austrian and Israel pavilions were among the highlights cited, along with an Estonian Pavilion presentation centered on daily artistic practice. Merike Estna will work throughout the Biennale on a wall painting in a community center gymnasium, the Biennale said, and the Biennale cited curator Natalia Sielewicz as likening the work to “the everyday feminism of sustaining life, of sustaining our planet.”