As artists, activists and cultural workers descend on Venice, the 61st Biennale becomes a volatile stage for debates around war, labour, ethics and the future of global art institutions.
8 May 2026
The 2026 Venice Biennale has opened amid extreme turmoil, with organisers facing pressure over national pavilions, particularly amid calls to protest the Israel and Russia pavilions. While activists and artists have demanded closures and organised strikes, and the EU has threatened funding cuts over Russia’s participation, reports of direct threats by organisers against national pavilions regarding closures are part of a highly charged, rapidly evolving situation.
Pamphlets distributed at the Arsenale by Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA). Image Suzette Bell-Roberts.
The tensions surrounding this year’s opening feel especially poignant in light of the late Koyo Kouoh’s curatorial vision for In Minor Keys, in what was already expected to be a deeply emotional edition of the Biennale following her passing. Kouoh’s exhibition foregrounds artists from across Africa, the diaspora and the Global South, continuing her longstanding commitment to expanding the intellectual and geographic frameworks through which contemporary art is understood. Her practice resisted binaries and often cautioned against the simplifications imposed by institutional discourse, valuing complexity, contradiction and multiplicity over grand declarations or ideological certainty. Rather than pursuing spectacle, Kouoh’s curatorial approach often favoured subtle gestures, layered histories and forms of opacity that resisted easy categorisation. Conceived as a meditation on tenderness, listening and fragile forms of connection in a fractured world, In Minor Keys sought to create space for nuanced forms of relation at a moment increasingly defined by polarisation and rupture. The fact that the Biennale has opened amid such intense political unrest perhaps reveals both the urgency and the difficulty of the kind of relational ethics she sought to cultivate.
Protesters gather near the Arsenale during today’s strikes and demonstrations. Image Suzette Bell-Roberts.
On Friday, 8 May, cultural workers, activists and artists staged coordinated strike actions and demonstrations across Venice during the Biennale’s preview days. Organised by Italian labour groups and transnational activist coalitions, the protests focused on the Biennale’s decision to permit the participation of both Israel and Russia amid ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine. Demonstrators gathered outside the pavilions, carrying Palestinian and Ukrainian flags, banners denouncing institutional complicity, and placards calling for cultural accountability. Many of the national pavilions closed their doors, but not for long, after receiving calls from the Biennale organisers demanding that they reopen. The Biennale organisers have stated they are an “open institution” that rejects censorship, but they face immense backlash, including from the European Commission, which has threatened to cut funding due to Russia’s inclusion.
At the centre of the demonstrations was the Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA), a coalition that has spent months mobilising artists and cultural practitioners against Israel’s participation. Hundreds of signatories — including exhibiting artists, curators and academics — have argued that institutions can no longer claim political neutrality while continuing to platform states accused of grave human rights violations. Protesters described the Biennale’s stance as emblematic of a wider crisis within international cultural institutions: one in which calls for justice are often subordinated to diplomatic convention and market interests.
Ecuador hangs posters in support of Palestine on the front of its off-site pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale. Photo: Jo Lawson-Tancred.
The controversy surrounding Israel’s participation intensified further because the Israeli pavilion was relocated from its permanent Giardini building to the Arsenale after the historic pavilion underwent renovation works. While officially a logistical decision, the move carried considerable symbolic weight. Unlike the Giardini’s permanent national pavilions, participation within the Arsenale is perceived as more directly integrated into the Biennale’s central curatorial framework. Critics argued that positioning Israel within one of the exhibition’s most prominent zones amplified perceptions of institutional endorsement at a moment of escalating international outrage over the war in Gaza.
The Russian pavilion became another flashpoint earlier this week when members of Pussy Riot, joined by FEMEN activists and Ukrainian supporters, staged a dramatic protest outside the pavilion, temporarily disrupting access during the Biennale previews. Images of activists in fluorescent pink balaclavas releasing coloured smoke and carrying Ukrainian flags circulated rapidly online, underscoring how this year’s Biennale has become inseparable from the geopolitical fractures shaping the contemporary world.
The unrest has not been confined to the streets. In an extraordinary escalation, the Biennale’s international jury resigned ahead of the official opening, citing ethical concerns over participation by countries implicated in active conflicts. Their resignation effectively dismantled the exhibition’s traditional prize structure, forcing organisers to replace the coveted Golden Lion awards with a public voting system. It is a remarkable institutional rupture for an event historically associated with prestige, diplomacy and carefully managed spectacle.
Art Not Genocide Alliance protest at the Arsenale on May 6, during the opening week of the 61st Venice Biennale. Courtesy ANGA.
That this edition now unfolds amid strikes and political confrontation carries a painful irony. Kouoh’s practice consistently insisted that art could remain porous to the urgencies of the world without surrendering complexity or tenderness. Yet the Biennale opening has instead exposed the degree to which international exhibitions themselves have become battlegrounds for broader ethical debates surrounding war, censorship, labour and institutional responsibility.
Questions once considered peripheral now sit at the centre of global cultural discourse. Can national pavilions still function meaningfully in an era defined by transnational crisis? Does cultural participation constitute endorsement? Is exclusion a necessary form of accountability, or does it risk reproducing new forms of censorship? And perhaps most urgently: what responsibilities do major art institutions bear toward the communities and political realities they claim to engage?
Paste-ups around Venice. Image Suzette Bell-Roberts.
The strike action in Venice also reflects widening frustrations among cultural workers themselves. Beyond geopolitical concerns, protesters have highlighted precarious labour conditions, widening inequalities within the arts sector and the growing disconnect between institutional rhetoric and lived realities. In this sense, the demonstrations are not solely about specific nation states, but about the structures through which culture is funded, governed and legitimised.
For many visitors arriving in Venice this week, the experience has been defined as much by protest chants echoing across the canals as by the exhibitions themselves. Yet perhaps this is precisely the condition contemporary art can no longer evade. The Biennale has historically functioned as a mirror of global anxieties — from fascism and colonialism to migration and climate collapse. This year, however, the mirror feels fractured. The opening days have revealed an art world increasingly unable to separate aesthetics from ethics, or cultural production from political consequence.
As Venice continues to fill with artists, collectors, curators and journalists over the coming days, one thing has become unmistakably clear: the 61st Venice Biennale will not be remembered solely for what hung on its walls. It will also be remembered for what unfolded outside them.
