Against the lure of Kouoh\u2019s exhibition, though, was a queasy realisation that the Biennale seemed to be ideologically backsliding. Russia and Israel, both accused of war crimes, were controversially participating<\/a>.<\/p>\n Alongside the huge guest-curated show of contemporary art, the Biennale invites countries to present exhibitions they curate themselves in national pavilions in the Giardini di Biennale and citywide venues. Following Putin\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia was excluded, its pavilion remaining shuttered throughout the 59th and 60th editions. But last year Giorgia Meloni\u2019s government appointed rightwing ideologue Pietro Buttafuoco<\/a> as Biennale director. <\/p>\n Buttafuoco revoked Russia\u2019s exclusion. He also facilitated the relocation of Israel\u2019s exhibition from its usual Giardini pavilion to a high security cul-de-sac in the Biennale\u2019s second official venue, the massive Arsenale.<\/p>\n \u201cThis biennale seems cursed,\u201d texted my friend. Despite feeling hypocritical about the environmental burden, I booked a flight to Venice.<\/p>\n In the weeks leading up to the exhibition, my friend\u2019s suggestion looked increasingly on point. A complicated choreography of war, state violence and activism began to play out. They culminated during the Bienniale preview in angry protests and violent reprisals.<\/p>\n The Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA)<\/a> gathered 236 curators, artists and art workers to campaign for Israel\u2019s exclusion and improved conditions for cultural workers. <\/p>\n When Kouoh\u2019s international jury refused to consider Israel and Russia<\/a> for the Biennale\u2019s prestigious Golden Lion awards, artist Belu-Simion Fainaru, who was representing Israel, threatened them with legal action<\/a>, according to the Italian news agency Adnkronos and arts publication Hyperallergic. The jury resigned<\/a>. Their subsequent silence has not been explained. <\/p>\n Relieved of the professional all-female expert jury that Kuouh appointed, Buttafuoco instated a Eurovision-style audience prize. At the time of writing, over 70 artists have withdrawn from the awards<\/a> in protest.<\/p>\n Like an artwork, a curse is a performative utterance at the nexus of ritual symbolism and magic. People like to believe that art, unlike curses, is a force for good. But as I argue in my book The Deployment of Art<\/a>, there is a long history of state co-option of art and artists in the service of malign agendas of state violence. To me, The 61st Biennale seems one such example. <\/p>\n In a statement on the Biennale website<\/a>, Buttafuoco amplifies the spiritual dimensions of Kouoh\u2019s vision. \u201cIt is an exhibition permeated with spirit, with a sacredness that puts the person, the human being, back at the heart of things \u2026 looking to the sky once more.\u201d<\/p>\n Much art in the main exhibition is hard to square with such whimsy. Pio Abad\u2019s precise critical drawings<\/a> of everyday objects of imperial plunder, like houseplants and chocolate, alongside stolen Benin bronzes. Walid Raad\u2019s series of found photographs of beds slept in by Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat. Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige\u2019s extraordinary sculptural excavation of the lost ancient city of Orthosia, hidden beneath a buried refugee camp in southern Lebanon. <\/p>\n But other works better serve Buttafuoco\u2019s vague, obfuscating narratives of \u201csacredness\u201d and \u201cspirituality\u201d. <\/p>\n In the Arsenale, an uprooted olive tree that recalls images of the desecration of Palestinian olive groves<\/a> rotates on a plinth to the perverse accompaniment of tinkly ballerina music. This work by Theo Eshetu is titled Garden of the Broken Hearted, but the accompanying label doesn\u2019t explain why the tree was uprooted, or from where, only that it \u201cstands as a poetic reflection of impermanence\u201d. <\/p>\n Alfredo Jaar\u2019s \u201cshrine\u201d to base materials, a thrumming scarlet cathedral titled The End of the World<\/a> meanwhile, so overwhelms the senses that I felt faint. I later saw a young woman collapsed outside it, attended by paramedics. Numerous other works draw on ritual traditions and spiritual practices from \u201cthe powerhouse of Africa\u201d (Buttofuocco\u2019s term).<\/p>\n Police presence was pervasive throughout the previews. Armed, helmeted officers held a line around Pussy Riot\u2019s demonstration at the Russian pavilion<\/a>, where protesters released blue, yellow and pink smoke canisters chanting \u201cbloody Russian art\u201d and \u201ccurated by Putin, corpses included\u201d. <\/p>\n On the final preview day, as many pavilions closed early in strike protest, police stomped through the Giardini in heavily armed groups ten or 20 strong. At 4.30pm a peaceful crowd of ANGA protesters, many with young children in pushchairs or carried on shoulders, marched from the Giardini to the Arsenale where riot police used batons<\/a> to beat them back. Surveillance helicopters hovered over the city until long after midnight.<\/p>\n When future art historians study the 61st Biennale, they may notice a poster slogan from the ANGA protest: \u201cPalestine is the Future of the World.\u201d Meanwhile, visitors would do well to venture beyond the Giardini and Arsenale to an unofficial collateral exhibition organised by the Museo Moderno Buenos Aires. <\/p>\nAngry protests and violent reprisals<\/h2>\n
Visions of hell<\/h2>\n
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