16/4/24: NO BUSINESS AS USUAL DURING A GENOCIDE

ANGA's campaign has ensured there can be no business as usual at the Venice Biennale while Israel commits genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The artistic team of the Israeli Pavilion has retreated as a direct consequence of widespread pressure and our collective campaign.

The Genocide Pavilion has been forced to respond to 24,000 signatories who condemn the Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza but, contrary to the artistic team’s claims, they have not withdrawn, the pavilion has not been closed.

ANGA reiterates its demand to shut down the pavilion in its entirety.

ANGA does not applaud empty and opportunistic gestures timed for maximum press coverage, and leaving video works on view to the public, while Palestinians are killed by Israel every hour and millions face imminent famine.

ANGA calls for an end to the genocide being perpetrated by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza, an end to the apartheid and an end to the occupation of Palestine.

ANGA calls for all cultural workers of conscience to join us in these explicit demands. We refuse anything less.

Any official representation of the state of Israel on the international cultural stage is an endorsement of its policies and of the genocide in Gaza.

NO WINDOW DISPLAY.

ANGA calls for the exclusion of Israel from the Venice Biennale.

Shut it down.

No death in Venice.

No business as usual.



18/3/24: ANGA ESCALATION: BOYCOTT THE GENOCIDE PAVILION

NO VISITORS, NO PRESS, NO PARTIES

30 days and counting until Israel's Genocide Pavilion opens at the Venice Biennale.

As Israel's artist and curatorial team press ahead with their "Fertility Pavilion" due to open on 17 April, ANGA escalates its campaign. We call for a boycott of the pavilion of Israel, which represents an apartheid state perpetrating genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

The Biennale has refused our principled call, supported by 22,000+ arts workers, for the exclusion of Israel while it is on trial at the United Nations International Court of Justice for "plausible genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza.

The Italian Culture Minister says culture is "a bridge between people and nations, not a dividing wall." Culture is not a bridge between people and nations when one nation is involved in the elimination of another, the citizens of which are kept behind a literal prison wall. The Minister says Israel has "a duty to bear witness to its people" at the Biennale. We bear witness to the more than 31,341 Palestinians killed in Gaza by the Israeli occupation, including over 13,000 children, and the many thousands wounded, maimed, and orphaned. We bear witness to the 2.2 million Palestinians internally displaced and starving to death in a famine deliberately imposed by Israel. We bear witness to Israel's mass destruction of Palestinian art and culture. We bear witness to 75 years of Israel's occupation of Palestine.

The Venice Biennale will not consider any petition or request to exclude the presence of Israel from this year's 60th International Art Exhibition, in disregard of its own history of excluding South Africa due to its globally condemned apartheid regime. The Biennale also ignores its own impassioned public statements in support of Ukraine following Russia's illegal military invasion in 2022.

ANGA refuses empty rhetoric and rejects any exceptionalism for the genocidal apartheid state of Israel currently on trial at the highest court in the world.

We call for a boycott of the Israeli Pavilion. No visitors, no press coverage, no parties. We call for the refusal to accept the presence at any events of official delegations, institutions or persons tied in any capacity to the Israeli government. We call for arts workers to withdraw from any events associated with the state of Israel. We call for the pavilions of other nations in the Giardini and beyond to exclude Israel from their own events. We invite artists participating in the Biennale to make known their recognition of the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and their support for ANGA's campaign.

Join ANGA. Make yourself visible. Raise your voice.

No death in Venice.

No business as usual.

BOYCOTT THE GENOCIDE PAVILION AT THE VENICE BIENNALE.



ANGA 2024 OPEN LETTER TO THE VENICE BIENNALE

We, the undersigned, call for the exclusion of Israel from the Venice Biennale.
As the art world readies itself to visit the Giardini’s nation-state diorama, we say platforming art representing a state engaged in ongoing atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza is unacceptable. No Genocide Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

The world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, has affirmed that Israel is plausibly committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The ICJ has issued interim measures warning Israel to cease any acts of genocide in Gaza. Israel’s months- and in fact many-decades-long assault on Gaza continues regardless, while its leaders proclaim they are above International Law and boldly advertise their genocidal intent. 

The Biennale was modelled on the Eurocentric world fair and retains these geopolitical biases. Demands for it to acknowledge atrocities committed by its participants are not, however, without precedent. From 1950-1968, due to widespread global condemnation and calls for boycott, apartheid South Africa was discouraged from exhibiting and sidelined when the Biennale allocated spaces. An official ban was put in place in 1968 based on the UN resolution 2396 to suspend “exchanges with the racist regime.” South Africa was not readmitted until its apartheid rule was abolished in 1993. 

Leading international, Palestinian, and Israeli human rights organisations have long argued that Israel’s occupation of Palestine, of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip — deemed illegal by the UN Resolution 242 of November 1967 — constitutes, together with its treatment of Palestinians inside 1948 borders, a cruel system of apartheid and a crime against humanity.

In 2022, with Russia’s war on Ukraine freshly underway, the Biennale and its curator issued numerous public statements in support of the Ukrainian people’s right to self-determination, freedom, and humanity. The Biennale’s public condemnation of “the unacceptable military aggression by Russia” included an avowal to reject “any form of collaboration with those who have carried out or supported such a grievous act of aggression” and a refusal to “accept the presence at any of its events of official delegations, institutions or persons tied in any capacity to the Russian government.” 

The Biennale has been silent about Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians. We are appalled by this double standard. Israel’s assault on Gaza constitutes one of the most intense bombardments in history. By the end of October 2023 Israel had already fired tonnes of explosives on Gaza equal in force to the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945. In January 2024 it was reported that the daily death rate in Gaza exceeds that of any other major conflict in the 21st century.  

The Israeli pavilion curators and artist have issued a simplistic statement about the necessity of art in dark times, insisting on a “pocket for free expression and creation amidst everything that’s happening.”  Another double standard. 

Art does not happen in a vacuum (let alone a “pocket”), and cannot transcend reality. Euphemisms cannot erase violent truths. Any work that officially represents the state of Israel is an endorsement of its genocidal policies. There is no free expression for the Palestinian poets, artists, and writers murdered, silenced, imprisoned, tortured, and prevented from travelling abroad or internally by Israel. There is no free expression in the Palestinian theatres and literary festivals shut down by Israel. There is no free expression in the museums, archives, publications, libraries, universities, schools, and homes of Gaza bombed to rubble by Israel. There is no free expression in the war crime of cultural genocide. 

While the Israeli pavilion presses ahead, the genocidal death toll in Gaza and the West Bank increases daily. While Israel’s curatorial team plans their “Fertility Pavilion” reflecting on contemporary motherhood, Israel has murdered more than 12,000 children and destroyed access to reproductive care and medical facilities. As a result, Palestinian women have C-sections without anaesthetic and give birth in the street.

Any official representation of Israel on the international cultural stage is an endorsement of its policies and of the genocide in Gaza. 

The Biennale is platforming a genocidal apartheid state. 

No death in Venice. 

No business as usual. 

NO GENOCIDE PAVILION AT THE VENICE BIENNALE.

*** An earlier version of this letter suggested the absence of Palestinian artists from the Biennale’s collateral program. While an exhibition titled “Foreigners in their Homeland” by the Palestine Museum US was rejected, the project “South West Bank: Landworks, Collective action and Sound” by Artists + Allies x Hebron includes Palestinian artists.

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