Israel has decided to keep its pavilion at the Venice Biennale closed. The announcement was made a little while ago when the pre-opening for the press of the international event was scheduled. “The artist and the curators of the Israeli pavilion will open the exhibition when a ceasefire agreement and the release of the hostages is reached,” is written on a sign in front of the entrance to the exhibition in the Jewish country. The three video art works by artist Ruth Patir that make up the “(M)otherland” exhibition will still be presented in the pavilion, and passers-by will be able to see them through its windows. “I don’t like it,” said the artist Patir, “but I think it’s important.” As Haaretz writes, the curators Tamar Margalit and Mira Lapidot, who decided for the closure, explained the two reasons that led to the decision not to open the pavilion: «Art needs an open heart, which in this moment doesn’t exist, so it’s better to stay closed. But above all, as human beings, women and citizens, we cannot be here when nothing changes in the reality of the hostages. Until the end we thought we were going in another direction and that there was an agreement on the table. We will open the pavilion when an agreement on the hostages and a ceasefire is reached, and we hope that this will happen during the seven months of the Biennale.”
Israel’s presence at the Biennale, which officially opens on Saturday, had sparked strong protests from many, who called for its removal due to the events in Gaza, despite both Ruth Patir and the curators having already expressed their opinion in favor of a ceasefire on fire in war. In February, many artists signed an open letter calling on the Biennale to cancel Israeli participation, writing that “the Biennale is proposing a genocidal apartheid state.” But Israeli participation in the event was reiterated on the hour by the Italian culture minister Sangiuliano. Protests against Israel over how it is managing the war in Gaza have already taken place at the Oscars, the Grammy Awards, the Eurovision Song Contest and other international events.
The choice to close, while leaving the possibility of seeing Patir’s work from the windows, also reflects security concerns, given that at the same Biennale in 1982, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, a bomb was detonated in front of the Israeli pavilion , while, as the New York Times recalls, the Israel area at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in 2015 was occupied by pro-Palestine activists. The concern is that, after the controversies that have accompanied the Israeli presence in Venice, the calls to boycott the Jewish country and the demonstrations in Italy, the pavilion could be targeted. The Israeli government was not informed in advance of the curators’ choice to close.