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Venice, Italy – Since February, thousands of pro-Palestinian activists have tried in vain to get the Venice Biennale, one of the world’s most prestigious international art exhibitions, to ban Israel over its conduct of the war in the Gaza Strip.
But this week, when the Biennale’s international pavilions open for a media preview, the doors to the Israel pavilion will nonetheless remain locked, at the behest of the artist and curators representing Israel.
A woman takes a photo as an Italian soldier patrols the Israeli pavilion at the Biennale art fair in Venice on Tuesday.Credit: AP
“The artist and curators of the Israeli pavilion will open the exhibition when a ceasefire and hostage release agreement is reached,” reads a sign that the Israeli team taped to the door of the pavilion.
“I hate it,” Ruth Patir, the artist chosen to represent Israel, said in an interview about her decision not to open the exhibit she has been working on, “but I think it’s important”.
She said that while the Biennale, which opens to the public on Saturday, is a huge opportunity for a young artist like herself, the situation in Gaza was “so much bigger than me”, and she felt that closing the pavilion was the only action she could take.
The war has cast a shadow over major cultural events. Since the October 7 Hamas attacks in southern Israel, in which Israeli officials said about 1200 people were killed and 240 taken hostage, and Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which authorities there say has killed more than 33,000 people, artists have reacted at major events around the world. There have been protests from the stages of the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards; an artist subtly included a “Free Palestine” message in his work at the Whitney Biennial; and there have been debates about Israel’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest.
The sign on the closed Israeli national pavilion on Tuesday.Credit: AP
Those protests all came from outside Israel. And although many Israelis share Patir’s desire for a ceasefire and hostage deal, a call for a ceasefire from an artist representing the country at an important international event could draw criticism from Israeli lawmakers, said Tamar Margalit, an Israel pavilion curator who reached the decision with Patir and Mira Lapidot, another curator of the pavilion.
Israel’s government, which has paid about half the pavilion’s costs, was not informed in advance about the protest, Margalit said. The Israeli Culture Ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment Tuesday.