A new international scandal is brewing around the 61st Venice Biennale, and this time the dispute is not only about contemporary art. A group of exhibition participants demanded that the management of one of the world’s most famous cultural forums exclude Russia, Israel, and the United States from the list of official participants. The appeal was signed by 73 artists and cultural figures.
For the Israeli audience, this story is important not only because the Israeli delegation is directly named in the letter.
The scandal around the Biennale shows how the world’s largest cultural venues are increasingly turning into spaces of political pressure, ideological campaigns, and symbolic boycotts, where the question is no longer about the quality of the exhibition, but about who is even allowed to be represented.
When art ceases to be a neutral territory
What exactly did the Biennale participants demand
The joint appeal was published in the South African art magazine ArtThrob. Its authors expressed solidarity with people who, according to them, suffer from systemic oppression, war, violence, and inequality in various regions of the world — from Palestine, Sudan, and Myanmar to Ukraine, Lebanon, Iran, Venezuela, and other points of global crisis.
The authors of the letter emphasized that they consider decolonial practice, an anti-racist agenda, and the protection of human rights an integral part of their own work. That is why they opposed the presence of official delegations from states that, in their assessment, are involved in war crimes.
In this list, they specifically named Israel, Russia, and the USA.
The decision to move the Israeli pavilion to the Arsenale — one of the central spaces of the Biennale, where the main part of the exhibition program will be concentrated — caused particular irritation among the signatories. According to critics, such a decision emphasizes the status of Israeli participation, while the absence of a Palestinian pavilion, on the contrary, demonstrates inequality and political imbalance.
Why a separate conflict arose around the Israeli pavilion
Artists in the appeal claim that the presence of the Israeli pavilion in the new location allegedly contradicts the spirit of the late curator Koyo Kouoh’s concept. Moreover, they stated that enhanced security measures, including police and military escorts, will create an atmosphere of fear and pressure around the exhibition.
It is here that the cultural dispute finally ceases to be just a professional discussion.
It is no longer about installations, curatorial logic, or artistic language, but about an attempt to deprive entire states of the right to official cultural presence. In the case of Israel, this is especially sensitive, as the country is already regularly the target of international campaigns where artistic, academic, and humanitarian structures are used as tools of political isolation.
Why Russia and the USA were placed alongside Israel
The logic of the letter and the effect of equalization
The most resonant part of the appeal was the demand to not allow participation not only for Russia but simultaneously for Israel and the United States. The authors of the letter essentially propose applying the same principle to these countries: if a state is accused of severe military actions, its official participation in an international art exhibition should not be normalized.
Such a formulation of the question seems not just controversial to many in Israel but deliberately provocative.
It erases the difference between a country waging war against Hamas after the largest terrorist massacre in its modern history and Russia, which launched a full-scale aggression against Ukraine and has been using culture as one of the tools to legitimize its foreign policy for several years.
That is why such initiatives provoke an especially acute reaction in Israel. When Israel is placed alongside states that openly pursue aggressive or repressive policies in an international campaign, it is perceived not as a defense of human rights but as political equalization, in which the context, the cause of the war, and the country’s right to self-defense are erased.
Why the return of Russia caused a separate shock
The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that this year Russia, for the first time since the start of the full-scale war against Ukraine, has re-entered the official list of participants in the Venice Biennale.
The Russian pavilion plans to present a project involving more than 50 young musicians, poets, and philosophers from Russia and other countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Mali, and Mexico.
One of the central themes of the exhibition will be the idea that politics exists in temporal dimensions, while cultures supposedly communicate in eternity. Against the backdrop of the ongoing war against Ukraine, such a formula sounds like an attempt to take Russian cultural presence beyond political responsibility and present it again as something universal, separate from the actions of the state.
NANews — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency notes that it is precisely such cultural constructs that Moscow especially loves to use for returning to international institutions. The meaning of such gestures is simple: to show that Russian culture supposedly remains part of the “normal” world, despite the war, destruction, strikes on Ukrainian cities, and attempts to impose the ideology of the so-called “Russian world” on neighbors.
Biennale between artistic freedom and political responsibility
Who is behind the Russian project and why it raised questions
The commissioner of the Russian project is Anastasia Karneeva — the daughter of a retired general and deputy director of one of the largest defense corporations “Rostec” Nikolai Volobuev. This fact alone heightened the suspicions of critics who believe that this is not an independent artistic initiative but a continuation of state cultural influence under an aesthetic guise.
Russia’s representative for international cultural exchanges and former Minister of Culture Mikhail Shvydkoy directly stated that the country’s participation in the Biennale confirms: Russian culture could not be isolated, and attempts to “cancel” it by Western elites have failed. This phrase only reinforced the opinion of those who consider Moscow’s current return not an artistic event but a political demonstration.
Additional irritation was caused by the program, in which the organizers announced the participation of five contemporary figures, allegedly having serious unpopularity with their own governments — in the USA, Israel, China, Russia, and even in the European Union. Against this backdrop, the boundaries between curatorial experiment and political manifesto become even less noticeable.
How Ukraine, Europe, and Italy reacted
After Russia was included in the list of participants, Ukraine called on the organizers to reconsider the decision and maintain the previous position of condemning the occupying state. Then the European Commission threatened to deprive the Venice Biennale of grant funding if Russian participation is confirmed definitively.
Italy’s Minister of Culture Alessandro Giuli, in turn, called on the government representative on the Biennale board Tamara Gregoretti to resign, stating that his department was not warned about the possible admission of Russia.
However, the exhibition organizers responded that they did not violate any rules and see no grounds for canceling participation. Their position boils down to the fact that the Biennale should remain a space of dialogue, openness, and artistic freedom.
It is in this formula that the main conflict is hidden today. While some speak of artistic freedom, others see it as a convenient cover for political legitimization. While some defend the right to participate, others consider participation itself a form of normalization.
For Israel, this story is also important because it shows that international cultural venues are increasingly becoming arenas of struggle not for art as such, but for the right to determine who is considered an acceptable participant in the global conversation. And in this new world, boycott, exhibition space, and political manifesto have long been in the same row.