Since February, thousands of pro-Palestinian activists have tried in vain to get the Venice Biennale, one of the world’s most prestigious international art fairs, to ban Israel for waging war on Gaza.
But on Tuesday, when the Biennale’s international pavilions open for a media preview, the doors to the Israel pavilion will nevertheless remain locked, at the behest of the artist and curators representing Israel.
“The artist and curators of the Israeli pavilion will open the exhibition when a ceasefire and hostage release agreement is reached,” reads a sign the Israeli group taped to the pavilion’s door.
“I hate it,” Ruth Patir, the artist chosen to represent Israel, said in an interview about her decision not to open the exhibition she’s working on, “but I think it’s important.”
She said that while the Biennale, which opens to the public on Saturday, is a huge opportunity for a young artist like herself, the situation in Gaza was “much bigger than me” and she felt that closing the pavilion was the only action that he could do.
The war has cast a shadow over major cultural events. Since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas in southern Israel, in which Israeli officials said about 1,200 people were killed and 240 taken hostage, and Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which authorities say has killed more than 33,000 people, the artists they reacted to major events around the world. There were protests from the stages of the Oscars and Grammy Awards, an artist subtly included a “Free Palestine” message in his work at the Whitney Biennial, and there were discussions about Israel’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest.
All of these protests came from outside of Israel. And although many Israelis share Patir’s desire for a ceasefire and a hostage deal, a call for a ceasefire by an artist representing the country at a major international event could draw criticism from Israeli lawmakers, said Tamar Margalit , an Israeli booth curator who reached the decision with Patir and Mira Lapidot, another booth curator. Israel’s government, which has paid about half of the pavilion’s costs, was not notified in advance of the protest, Margalit said.
Margalit said visitors will still be able to view one of Patir’s video pieces through the pavilion’s windows. For this two-and-a-half-minute piece, Patir used computers to bring to life images of ancient fertility statues, which are a recurring motif in her work. The female statues, many with broken or missing limbs, come to life in the film and move around, wailing in grief and anger.
Patir said the artwork, completed this month, reflected her sadness and frustration over the conflict. The emotions depicted in the film “felt accurate to the experience of living in the moment,” Patir added.
In recent decades, the Venice Biennale has often reflected Israel’s strained relations with other Middle Eastern countries. In 1982, after Israel invaded Lebanon, an Italian communist organization detonated a bomb outside the Israeli pavilion, destroying some of the artwork inside. More recently, in 2015, pro-Palestinian activists briefly occupied the Israel Pavilion and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
The furor surrounding Israel’s booth this year began in February when the Art Not Genocide Alliance, an activist group, published an open letter calling for a ban on what it said were Israel’s “ongoing atrocities” in Gaza.
“Any official representation of Israel on the international cultural stage is an endorsement of its policies and the genocide in Gaza,” the letter said. Among its signatories were photographer and activist Nan Goldin and artists representing their countries in 14 of the pavilions at this year’s Biennale, including those of Chile, Finland and Nigeria.
The Art Not Genocide Alliance did not respond to interview requests, but in its letter drew historical parallels to justify its call for a ban. In the 1960s, the Italian government banned South Africa due to apartheid. And when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian artists chosen to represent it decided to withdraw. (Russia is not participating again this year and has lent its large pavilion, in a prime location in the Biennale Gardens, Bolivia.)
Biennale organizers rejected those comparisons, saying any country recognized by the Italian government was free to take part. Italian lawmakers argued even more strongly. In February, Gennaro Sangiuliano, Italy’s culture minister, said Israel had both “a right to express its art” and a duty “to bear witness to its people precisely in an age like this that has been mercilessly beaten by merciless terrorists. “
Throughout the upheaval, Patir, whose work is little known outside of Israel, has remained silent, declining interview requests while she completes work on her stand-up show, called “(M)Homeland.”
Initial descriptions of the show called it “a fertility booth,” but Patir said the show was really an exploration of the pressure placed on women to become mothers. Four years ago, Patir said, she was diagnosed with a gene mutation that increased her risk of breast and ovarian cancer, and doctors recommended that she freeze her eggs so she wouldn’t lose her chance at motherhood.
At the time, she “was faced with the patriarchal gaze of the medical world, trying to put me in this fertility box,” Patir said. She began recording her medical appointments for use at work.
Last September, a committee of Israeli art professionals appointed by the Ministry of Culture selected Patir to go to Venice. A month later, Hamas attacked Israel.
Patir said she cried regularly over these attacks and Israel’s retaliation in Gaza. He also regularly participated in protests in Tel Aviv, he added, calling for a hostage deal and for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to step down. The show booth job was her only solace, Patir said, though the conflict also cast a shadow over that.
During a visit to the Israel Antiquities Authority’s warehouses to examine the collection of ancient fertility gods, Patir said, an archivist let her handle a set of broken and fragmented statues. “It was almost emotional,” Patir recalls, “seeing these broken women against all the images in the news.”
As the event approached, Patir said she and curators hoped the situation would turn around. They could not have imagined “that we would be in Venice in April with the hostages still being held, with the war still raging,” Patir said. So they made some decisions: first to cancel the party that traditionally celebrates the opening of the pavilion, then to make an artwork in response to the war, and finally to close the show altogether.
Little progress has been made towards a ceasefire and tensions have risen between Israel and Iran. But Patir said she hoped the conditions would be met so she could welcome visitors before the Biennale ends on November 24.
“I think we’ll open it,” Patir said. “I think we will.”
