A previously unknown initiative by artists has… open letter called for Israel to be excluded from this year’s Venice Art Biennale. The group, which calls itself the Art Not Genocide Alliance, accuses Israel of “genocide” and claims that Israel has established a “cruel apartheid system” that constitutes a “crime against humanity.” So far, over 8,000 artists and cultural workers have signed the letter.
In their letter they point to two role models: During the apartheid regime in South Africa, the country was first declared undesirable at the Biennale and then, from 1968, officially excluded. It was not until 1993, after the end of apartheid, that it took part in the exhibition again. After Russia’s attack on Ukraine two years ago, the Biennale management spoke out unequivocally against Russia’s military aggression and declared that representatives of the Russian government or official Russian delegations would not be tolerated at the Biennale. The fact that the Biennale is “silent” on Israel amounts to a “double standard”. While the artist Ruth Patir will deal with female fertility in the Israeli pavilion, Palestinian mothers will have to give birth to their children on the streets.
The open letter is the latest of many anti-Israel statements that have been published by artists since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas. Among them was “Strike Germany”, with which several thousand cultural workers called for a boycott of German cultural institutions.
The Venice Art Biennale, the world’s most important exhibition of contemporary art, opens on April 20th. The German pavilion will be hosted by the Israeli artist Yael Bartana and the German theater director and performance artist Ersan Mondtag and curated by Çagla Ilk.