Venice Biennale: when the Serenissima is no longer so serene

CREDIT. The unmissable Venice Biennale has opened its doors against a backdrop of geopolitical crisis. Can an artistic event still be organized according to national logic? Venise is a strange place. A city said to be frozen in the past but that continues to thrive on its centuries-old stilts to the beat of the world’s turmoil. Particularly during its biennale, the largest art exhibition on the planet, which has just opened against the backdrop of a geopolitical crisis, artists do not live in soap bubbles floating above reality. And in this year when the war in the Middle East has added to the war in Ukraine, tension reigns more than ever in the Giardini and the Arsenal, the two main locations of the event.

Two events have set off sparks

On one hand, the decision made by the biennale organization, in the name of “artistic freedom,” as they put it, to reintegrate Russia into the community of nations by allowing the reopening of the Russian pavilion, closed since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. On the other hand, the presence, also validated by the biennale organization, of Israel and Iran, even though the Islamic Republic announced, just before opening to the public, that it would not finally participate in the event.

Consequence of these decisions: protests and petitions signed notably by prominent artists, more or less peaceful demonstrations, the mass resignation of the international jury in charge of awarding the prestigious awards of the event (such as the golden lion for the best national participation, where the represented state receives the prize), because they claim to be unable to compete with the pavilions of nations whose leaders are subject to an International Criminal Court warrant for war crimes.

“While Russia seeks to erase Ukrainian culture, it should not be allowed to exhibit its own.” – Kaja Kallas, Vice-President of the European Commission

Finally, unanimous political protests have arisen in Europe, up to the Vice-President of the European Commission, Kaja Kallas. “While Russia bombs museums, destroys churches, and seeks to erase Ukrainian culture, it should not be allowed to exhibit its own,” the Estonian launched on April 22. In retaliation, the EU will reduce its funding of the Venice Biennale by 2 million euros.

Should we applaud or condemn such reactions?

Let’s start by trying to understand the situation. By focusing on the specificity of the Venice Biennale, structured in “pavilions” representing states whose institutions select the artists who will represent them on a project basis. And that’s where the problem lies. Because while it is obviously necessary to strongly condemn the boycott of artists on the pretext that they are nationals of a country whose leaders pursue condemnable policies (in what way are the artists responsible for this?), the situation becomes more complicated when the artists work directly with that state, as, for Venice, they have offered their services through a nomination process by the institutions of that state.

Whether it be ministries of culture or cultural institutes, they are indeed always organizations mandated by the state, which explicitly links these pavilions and the works of the chosen artist to the cultural apparatus of the country. Not that they are by nature propagandistic, obviously, but the process of designating artists and the national architectural setting in which their works are housed obviously facilitates symbolic recuperation.

In these conditions, let’s agree, it becomes very difficult for artists who accept these rules of the game to oppose the accusation of allegiance to the governments that, in fact, finance their Venetian installations through their institutions, the countries they govern often being owners of the pavilions where the artists exhibit. They have even built them: as early as 1907 for Belgium, Hungary, and Germany having built their own in 1909, France in 1912, and Russia in 1914.

Neither boycott nor banner of “artistic freedom” raised

Let’s return to the case of the Russian pavilion authorized by the biennale president to reopen and present, since he is sovereign, an exhibition commissioned by the daughter of a senior executive of the Russian arms giant Rostec, associated with the daughter of Sergey Lavrov.

And while it is too easy to call for a boycott if it’s today’s “trend” (especially since everyone has their own scapegoats), is it not just as easy to brandish the argument of “artistic freedom” when, behind the artists and their work, it comes to displaying, thanks to the Venetian showcase, a soft power of a state that, moreover, silences artists who do not subscribe to the official narrative?

From then on, another question arises, and the answer is not simple: can we really – still – organize an artistic event according to national logics?