{"id":14415,"date":"2026-05-09T12:53:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T12:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/14415\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T12:53:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T12:53:26","slug":"venice-biennale-opens-without-a-jury-amid-strife-over-russian-and-israeli-participation-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/14415\/","title":{"rendered":"Venice Biennale opens without a jury amid strife over Russian and Israeli participation"},"content":{"rendered":"

VENICE \u2013 Geopolitical tensions spilled over into the Venice Biennale contemporary art exhibition, which opens its most chaotic<\/a> and contested edition in memory Saturday with no Golden Lions after the jury quit<\/a> in protest of Israel\u2019s and Russia\u2019s<\/a> participation and loud protests<\/a> outside their pavilions.<\/p>\n

The jury limited its action to countries under investigation by the International Criminal Court for human rights abuses, but some say the U.S.<\/a> should have been included. British artist Anish Kapoor<\/a> cited \u201cthe politics of hate and war and all that that\u2019s been going on now for too long.\u201d<\/p>\n

Visitors to the Giardini and Arsenale venues will vote for the best national pavilion, from 100 participants, and best participant in the main curated show, \u201cIn Minor Keys,\u201d in Eurovision style. The vote will be anonymous, and by email, the Biennale said Saturday. Winners will be announced closing day, Nov. 22.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the opening, protesters objecting to Israel’s participation clashed with police on Friday. Earlier in the week, feminist groups from Ukraine and Russia converged on the Russian Pavilion and Palestinians remembered artists killed in Gaza. <\/p>\n

Some places to start:<\/p>\n

Koyo Kouoh\u2019s \u2018In Minor Keys\u2019<\/p>\n

A towering red feathered sculpture with beaded embroidery greets visitors to the main curated show. Rooted in New Orleans Black Masking culture born from practices brought by enslaved Africans, the costume-like sculpture signals the show\u2019s focus on minority perspectives.<\/p>\n

The first African woman chosen to curate the main Biennale exhibition, the late Koyo Kouoh<\/a> assembled 110 artists and artistic groups under a title meant to spotlight the overlooked, and five co-curators carried on her legacy after her death a year ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was someone who thought about making spaces for everyone to shine and we see it in her exhibition, we see it with ourselves,\u201d said co-curator Marie Helene Pereira.<\/p>\n

Britain’s Lubaina Himid explores life as a newcomer<\/p>\n

Lubaina Himid<\/a>, a Turner Prize winner, explores what it is like to make a home in a new place in her exhibition titled \u201cPredicting History: Testing Translation\u201d for the British Pavilion, featuring brightly hued paintings of couples facing the dilemmas of newcomers.<\/p>\n

In one, two architects are trying to decide where to build. \u201cOne of them is trying to decide, would we build a building here, that proves that we have contributed to the culture, and the other architect is saying \u2019No, no, no, no, no. Let\u2019s build something that we can escape in tomorrow,\u201d said Himid, who was born in Zanzibar and has spent more than 70 years in Great Britain.<\/p>\n

The Vatican\u2019s Mystic Garden<\/p>\n

The Vatican is offering spiritual respite from the world\u2019s turmoil in the Mystic Gardens of Discalced Carmelite order next to Venice\u2019s main train station.<\/p>\n

Participants walk among the vineyards and pass a pomegranate tree and beds of herbs, wearing headphones that pick up music by the 12th-Century abbess, mystic and composer, St. Hildegard of Bingen, reinterpreted by artists such as Brian Eno and Patti Smith.<\/p>\n

\u201cMusic also helps us delve into ourselves and understand, to use a phrase by Hildegard, the symphony that God has placed in our lives,\u201d said Rev. Ermanno Barucco, prior of the Carmelite order.<\/p>\n

Austrian Pavilion uses effluent as an artistic medium <\/p>\n

A naked woman hangs from a bell outside the Austrian Pavilion, a human clapper making the performance art by Florentina Holzinger one of the hottest appointments in the Giardini. Inside, a nude rider swirls around on a Jet Ski inside a tank \u2014 emblematic of Venice\u2019s relegation as an over-touristed amusement park.<\/p>\n

A naked woman breathes through a scuba mouthpiece in another huge tank filled with water that has been flushed from nearby toilets and filtered multiple times. The presentation is called \u201cSeaworld Venice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel: a meditation on love and war<\/p>\n

Inside Romanian-born artist Belu-Simion Fainaru’s installation, water drips from suspended tubes into a pool, stopping in cycles for just 42 seconds, representing divine creative power in Jewish mysticism. Locks hung around the pavilion, like those placed by lovers on bridges around Europe, are engraved with the commandment \u201cLove thy neighbor as thyself,\u201d in Hebrew, and the hopeful exhortation: \u201cThis too shall pass.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI am against boycott, I\u2019m for dialogue, and that\u2019s a political statement,\u201d said Fainaru, who called the jury’s exclusion of Israel a form of discrimination. <\/p>\n

Art as a daily practice in the Estonian Pavilion <\/p>\n

Estonian artist Merike Estna will work throughout the Biennale on a huge wall painting inside a community center gymnasium that was once a church \u2014 the space’s layered history mirroring her practice of spilling paint to build deeply textured surfaces over time. The act of daily painting represents the undervalued quotidian work of women. <\/p>\n

Curator Natalia Sielewicz likened it to \u201cthe everyday feminism of sustaining life, of sustaining our planet.” <\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VENICE \u2013 Geopolitical tensions spilled over into the Venice Biennale contemporary art exhibition, which opens its most chaotic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10036,10538,437,10539,10540,5,9640,10537,10541,243],"class_list":{"0":"post-14415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-italy","8":"tag-anish-kapoor","9":"tag-brian-eno","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ermanno-barucco","12":"tag-florentina-holzinger","13":"tag-italy","14":"tag-marie-helene-pereira","15":"tag-natalia-sielewicz","16":"tag-patti-smith","17":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}