{"id":25996,"date":"2026-05-08T03:11:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T03:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/25996\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T03:11:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T03:11:24","slug":"an-unprecedented-24-hour-strike-could-upend-the-venice-biennale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/25996\/","title":{"rendered":"An Unprecedented 24-Hour Strike Could Upend the Venice Biennale"},"content":{"rendered":"

An unprecedented 24-hour strike will interrupt the Venice Biennale\u2018s opening week on Friday, May 8, in protest of Israel\u2019s participation in the global art event. The action brings to a head tensions that have long been brewing between the Biennale\u2019s organizers and its critics over the inclusion of countries charged with war crimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat this strike reflects is a deep structural crisis for the Biennale,\u201d said Nika Grabar of the Nonument Group, an artist and research collective that is representing Slovenia in the Arsenale. \u201cWe\u2019re not trying to demolish the Biennale, but to save it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the strike has also exposed divisions among participants, with some artists and pavilion teams weighing solidarity with the protest movement against the rare opportunity the Biennale offers to platform their own political and cultural messages on an international stage.<\/p>\n

Grabar said that her team did not think twice about agreeing to take part in the strike. In particular, they believe it is important to stand in solidarity with the Biennale\u2019s jury, which resigned<\/a> shortly after it announced, on April 22, that it would not consider for the prestigious Golden Lion awards any artists representing countries accused of crimes against humanity. This would have included Israel and Russia.<\/p>\n

An Escalation<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s strike is an escalation of an ongoing campaign to see Israel excluded from the Biennale by the activist group Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA). In March, the group delivered the Biennale organizers a letter<\/a> demanding that Israel be excluded from the exhibition. It has so far been signed by over 230 Biennale participants, including 113 artists, 38 curators, and 85 art workers.<\/p>\n

Biennale organizers said that such initiatives, as well as any announced forms of strike action, do not involve the institution\u2019s staff or the organization but that they are committed to ensuring the \u201corderly conduct of the event, in respect of freedom of expression and the plurality of opinions,\u201d a representative said in an emailed statement, adding that \u201cits relationships with collaborators and suppliers are governed by contracts that adhere to the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"an<\/p>\n

Ecuador hangs posters in support of Palestine on the front of its offsite pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale. Photo: Jo Lawson-Tancred.<\/p>\n

Some Biennale participants are on the fence about whether to join the strike action. One of the ANGA letter\u2019s signatories was Tawna Collective, a group of artists representing Ecuador, which is celebrating its Biennale debut with an offsite pavilion near the Arsenale. The exhibition\u2019s general producer Anna Shvets told me that the pavilion\u2019s team is still deciding whether to strike. Though it has posters proudly expressing support for Palestine in its windows, it is weighing the issue against its own mission to spread an urgent message about colonialism in the Amazon.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone is speaking about their pain at the Biennale,\u201d said Shvets. With pavilion costs starting in the hundreds of thousands, she said it was \u201ccrucially important\u201d to take full advantage of any chance to reach an international audience about the ecological crises and Indigenous resistance that are central to the Ecuadorean exhibition.<\/p>\n

Not Business as Usual<\/p>\n

Grabar, from Slovenia\u2019s team, describes striking as \u201cthe least we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are suffering, and these problems of ours here in Venice are so minor compared to what is happening [in Palestine],\u201d she said. \u201cIf it weren\u2019t for this protest, I don\u2019t know how we would be able to walk around the Biennale and pretend everything is business as usual.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Art Not Genocide Alliance protest at the Arsenale on May 6, during the opening week of the 61st Venice Biennale. Courtesy of ANGA.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Biennale is not only its administration,\u201d she added. \u201cIt\u2019s foremost artists and architects and curators. We also have a say in this and we need to preserve this as a space that is not part of a genocidal economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Slovenian pavilion is in the Arsenale, where it serves as a transitional space between other pavilions and cannot close entirely. The team plans to dim the lights and turn off their sound installation, replacing it with a livestream of the Palestinian radio station Radio Alhara.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want the people from Gaza to have a place in the context of the Biennale,\u201d Grabar explained.<\/p>\n

ANGA\u2019s strike has been organized in collaboration with local cultural organizations, including Biennalocene, Sale Docks, Mi Riconosci, Vogliamo Tutt\u2019altro, as well as the Italian trade unions Associazione Difesa Lavoratori (ADL Cobas), Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), and Confederazione Unitaria di Base (CUB).<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Art Not Genocide Alliance protest at the Arsenale on May 6, during the opening week of the 61st Venice Biennale. Courtesy ANGA.<\/p>\n

A demonstration is planned for 4:30 p.m. local time and will take place on one of Venice\u2019s main streets, Via Garibaldi. An earlier protest organized by ANGA took place on Wednesday outside Israel\u2019s temporary pavilion at the Arsenale.<\/p>\n

Israel is being represented this year by the artist Belu-Simion Fainaru, a Romanian-born sculptor who moved to Israel in the 1970s. Fainaru did not respond to a request for comment on the strike but has previously told Artnet News that he opposes cultural boycotts. He added that his art seeks \u201cto create spaces where encounter and shared language remain possible across political and cultural divisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Biennale\u2019s organizers have also come under fire for allowing Russia to return to the Biennale this year after a four-year hiatus. The Russia pavilion was the site of a protest<\/a> on Wednesday morning led by the punk feminist collective Pussy Riot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An unprecedented 24-hour strike will interrupt the Venice Biennale\u2018s opening week on Friday, May 8, in protest of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[15896,15898,15899,15906,15903,15902,15897,15908,15900,1197,8,15901,37,15891,15904,15895,9,15907,5709,15905,7,748,15890,15892,15893,15894],"class_list":{"0":"post-25996","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-anga","9":"tag-anga-protest","10":"tag-anga-strike","11":"tag-anna-shvets","12":"tag-arsenale","13":"tag-art-news","14":"tag-art-not-genocide-alliance","15":"tag-artnet-news","16":"tag-biennale-strike","17":"tag-ecuador","18":"tag-headlines","19":"tag-info","20":"tag-israel","21":"tag-israel-pavilion","22":"tag-israeli-pavilion","23":"tag-national-pavilions","24":"tag-news","25":"tag-nika-grabar","26":"tag-slovenia","27":"tag-tawna-collective","28":"tag-top-stories","29":"tag-update","30":"tag-venice-biennale","31":"tag-venice-biennale-news","32":"tag-venice-biennale-protest","33":"tag-venice-biennale-strike"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116536769506023170","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}