Venice Biennale artists demand Israel's exclusion from renowned festival

A group of artists, curators and art workers participating in the 2026 Venice Biennale have written to the festival’s organisers demanding Israel’s exclusion from the international exhibition.
 
In a letter to the directors of the Venice Biennale seen by Middle East Eye, the Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA) says it is standing “in a collective refusal to allow you to platform the Israeli state as it commits genocide”.
 
Signed by 178 participants from around 25 countries represented in this year’s festival, the letter says that the “Venice Biennale’s complicity with the attempted destruction of Palestinian life must end”.
 
“No artist or cultural worker should be asked to share a platform with this genocidal state. As long as Israel exists by means of genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid, it must not be represented at the Venice Biennale,” the letter reads.

Well-known signatories include the Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar, the Moroccan Yto Barrada, and Cauleen Smith, a Black American filmmaker and multimedia artist.

The world-famous Biennale, which alternates every year between an art exhibition and an architecture one, hosts 29 permanent national pavilions in the Venice Giardini, where artists chosen by their countries exhibit.

Israel’s pavilion, which was opened in 1952, is one of these permanent sites. At the last art Biennale in 2024, many months after Israel’s genocide in Gaza had begun, ANGA launched a campaign against Israel’s participation with an open letter that was signed by over 24,000 people.

The pavilion was eventually shut down by Ruth Patir, the Israeli artist due to show work at it. In 2025, Israel did not participate in the architecture Biennale, with its culture ministry saying they needed to renovate the pavilion.

Patir’s closure of the national pavilion in 2024 prompted the Israeli government to introduce a clause into the contract for the 2026 Biennale requiring the selected artist to ensure that the pavilion stays open.

But this year’s Israeli entry will not be exhibited at the pavilion. Ordinarily, this would mean it would have to rent a space on the private market, but the Biennale has allowed Israel to move to a temporary space at the Venice Arsenale, a complex of former shipyards and armouries that serves as an exhibition space.
 
ANGA described this decision as an “explicit institutional endorsement at a moment of escalating violence”.

Venice Biennale under pressure over Israel and Russia

The president of the Venice Biennale, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, a right-wing Sicilian journalist who converted to Islam in 2015, has been filmed wishing a reporter a happy Ramadan while refusing to answer questions about Israel’s involvement. 

Buttafuoco is under fire across Europe for allowing Russia to return to the Biennale for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian entry is being led by Anastasia Karneeva, the daughter of a former intelligence officer, and Ekaterina Vinokurova, the daughter of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. 

'We remind you that Israeli violence also targets the art and culture supposedly held sacrosanct by the Biennale'

- Art Not Genocide Alliance

The Italian culture ministry has condemned the return of Russia to the Biennale but said nothing about Israel. In 2024, the ministry backed Israel's participation in the exhibition. 
 
Responding by email to questions from Middle East Eye, ANGA described the Biennale as “one of the oldest and most prestigious recurring exhibitions in the global art system”, and said that “within this context, Israel’s presence cannot be understood as neutral”.
 
“It functions as part of the ongoing cultural normalisation of a state that is currently perpetrating a genocide in Gaza while sustaining a decades-long regime of occupation, apartheid, and dispossession in the West Bank,” the group of artists, curators and art workers said.

Middle East Eye has written to the Biennale requesting comment.

Palestinian artists killed by Israel in Gaza

Scores of Palestinian artists have been killed by Israel during its genocide in Gaza.  Dorgham Qareqa, a Palestinian artist nicknamed “Van Gogh’s grandson”, died alongside his wife and siblings after Israel violated a ceasefire in March 2025. 

Heba Zagout, a Palestinian artist and educator described as a “one in a million talent”, was killed along with her two children in an October 2023 air strike. 

The visual artist Frans al-Salmi was killed along with dozens of other Palestinians when Israel bombed a beachfront cafe in June 2025. 

Dorgham Qareqa: Another Palestinian artist killed by Israel

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“We remind you that Israeli violence also targets the art and culture supposedly held sacrosanct by the Biennale,” the letter to the Biennale’s directors reads, referencing the destruction of centres of art and learning as well as the killing of Palestinian artists.

ANGA said that the Biennale’s decision to include Israel was “particularly striking” given the festival’s history. The institution excluded apartheid South Africa for decades, and its 1974 edition denounced the CIA-backed coup that overthrew Salvador Allende in Chile.

“The refusal to condemn and exclude Israel contributes to the reproduction of a narrative that continues to frame the Israeli state primarily as a victim while obscuring the structural violence on which it is built,” ANGA said.

The group pointed out that its demand was directed at “state representation, not at individuals”, including Israeli artists. 

“A national pavilion at the Venice Biennale is an official cultural representation of that state,” ANGA said, adding that they did not believe artists who oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza and aggressive expansion in the occupied West Bank “should be used as cultural cover for state violence”. 

“In fact, the current arrangement places artists in an impossible position by asking them to legitimise Israel’s presence regardless of their personal views,” the group said.