2024-04-18 07:50:44
At the Art Biennale in Venice, Italy, which opens to the public this Saturday, the Israeli pavilion will remain closed for the time being. It was decided by its curators and the author of the exhibited works. According to the ANSA agency, they made the gesture out of solidarity with the hostages who were kidnapped by the Palestinian terrorist movement Hamas on October 7 last year and are still being held in the Gaza Strip.
Israel is one of the 88 countries that is represented by its own national pavilion at the 60th anniversary of the Venice Biennale. In it, each country, including the Czech Republic, has control over its presentation, which may or may not coincide with the vision of the overall curator of the year and the main show put together by him. The event starts for the public this Saturday and will run until November 24.
“The artists and curators of the Israel Pavilion will open an exhibition when an agreement is reached on the ceasefire and the release of the hostages,” reads a sign on the door of the Israel Pavilion, located in Venice’s Giardini Gardens. Nearby, according to the AP agency, several armed Italian soldiers are guarding security.
Israeli artist Ruth Patir said she was sorry because for young artists like her, the biennale is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Nevertheless, she made this decision “out of solidarity with the families of the abductees and a large part of Israeli society that calls for change”.
According to the New York Times, the Israeli government was not notified in advance of the pavilion’s closure. At the same time, she paid about half of the costs. According to curators Tamar Margalit and Mira Lapidot, visitors will still see at least one short video that is part of the project through the windows of the modernist pavilion. “The exhibition is ready and the pavilion is waiting to be opened. But art can wait, while women, children and people who are now experiencing hell cannot wait,” the British newspaper Guardian quotes the curators.
“It’s a very brave decision,” praises the move by Adriano Pedrosa, the Brazilian curator of the entire main part of this year’s biennial. “And I think it is also a very wise decision. In the current context, it would be very difficult to present any work,” adds Pedrosa, who also included the works of three Palestinian artists in the main show.
One of them, Khaled Jarrar, who lives in New York, will not come in person because he has not received a visa. Another, Palestinian architect Dima Srouji, was critical of the Israeli gesture. “Achieving a ceasefire and the release of the hostages would allow the Israeli pavilion to continue as before. But the rest of us are fighting against 75 years of occupation and apartheid. We are fighting for our liberation, not for a ceasefire,” she said.
According to The Times of Israel she had Israeli exposition to commemorate Israeli and Palestinian women who died in Israel’s war with Hamas. The project was intended to support hostages held in Gaza and their relatives. The curators and the author of the work believe in a two-state solution to the conflict, so that Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in peace.
Since February, thousands of pro-Palestinian activists, including photographer Nan Goldin and Jesse Darling, the transgender winner of the British Turner Prize in 2019, have sought to exclude Israel from this year’s show. The call was posted by a group calling itself the Alliance for Art, Not Genocide. She is circulating a petition calling for a ban on Israeli participation, and promises more protests on the ground. The Israelis’ decision to close their own pavilion was criticized by the collective on Instagram as an “empty, opportunistic gesture”.
Activists accuse Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. They argue that between 1950 and 1968, the Italian government banned South Africa from participating in the Biennale because of the then apartheid regime in that African country. Italian Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano, however, supported the Israelis. “The Israelis have not only the right, but even the duty to testify at a time when they have been targeted by such ruthless terrorists,” he said.
Organizers similarly rejected calls to close the Iranian pavilion. Russia did not participate this year by its own decision.
The Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip responds to the terrorist attack by Hamas on October 7 last year, during which Palestinian terrorists murdered over 1,200 people and kidnapped another 250. As part of the retaliatory action in the Gaza Strip, over 33,000 people have died, according to the authorities there controlled by Hamas. The number cannot be independently verified.
More than 80 percent of the more than 2.3 million people living in Gaza have fled the military campaign, and NGOs have been warning for weeks of a humanitarian disaster.
The tragic event also marked other cultural events. Critical voices against Israel were heard at the awarding of the film Oscars and music Grammys or at the Berlinale festival.
In February, organizers of the international Eurovision Song Contest rejected an Israeli contestant’s song because they considered it too political, which is against the rules. According to the media, Israel subsequently agreed to edit the lyrics of the song.
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Hospodářské noviny reporter Pavel “Pawluscha” Novotný criticized initiatives calling for an end to the “genocide” in the Gaza Strip last week in the Spotlight program | Video: The Spotlight Team