'Enjoy the show. Ignore the war': Venice Biennale faces backlash after including Russia

'Enjoy the show. Ignore the war': Venice Biennale faces backlash after including Russia

The activists swarmed through the gardens of the Biennale – often described as the 'Olympics' of the arts – to yell their protest outside the Russian national pavilion, dressed all in black but for their fluorescent pink balaclavas.

As security guards rushed to close the glass doors, the protesters set off smoke flares and punched the air with screams of "Russia kills! Biennale exhibits!".

One poster declared: "Curated by Putin, dead bodies included."

"They're drinking vodka and champagne in their pavilion, soaked in the blood of Ukrainian children," Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova told me, arguing that Russia's push to be back at the high-profile event was part of its hybrid warfare.

"It's not just tanks and drones, murder and rape in Ukraine. It's also culture, art, language…it's the way [Russia] tries to conquer the West and you guys just opened the doors to them."

There has been concern over Russia's reinstatement ever since it was announced by Moscow earlier this year.

The European Commission has "strongly condemned" the move and threatened to pull €2 million in funding for the Biennale. It argues that "Allowing the aggressor, Russia, to shine" on such a platform is against ethical standards linked to the grant.

Italy's own culture minister will not attend when the fair opens to the public on Saturday.

But deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini – who famously visited Red Square in 2014 in a Putin T-shirt – refuses to join the boycott, arguing that "No pavilion should be excluded."

One source in Brussels suggested the Commission was not impressed by Italy's response.

The disquiet over the 61st Biennale goes beyond the return of Russia.

Last week, the entire international jury resigned after a statement that referred to countries with leaders wanted by the ICC for suspected war crimes. It meant Russia and Israel.

On Wednesday morning a separate group of protesters descended on the Israeli exhibit, leaving the floor outside carpeted with rain-sodden leaflets denouncing a "Genocide Pavilion".

Israel's foreign ministry has previously criticised a "political jury" for making the Biennale a place of "anti-Israeli political indoctrination".

As the fuss has grown, the event's president has resisted requests for interviews. A right-wing former journalist, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, has spoken admiringly in the past of Vladimir Putin.

Today, he broke his near silence on the Biennale to accuse critics of creating a "laboratory of intolerance" and condemn what he styled as censorship and exclusion in calls for Russia and Israel to be banned.

"If the Biennale began to select not works but affiliations, not visions but passports, it would cease to be what it has always been: the place where the world meets," Buttafuoco announced, then left the press conference before anyone could ask questions.

His argument ignores the point made by posters pasted all over Venice this week. They advertise imaginary events at an "Invisible Biennale" featuring Ukrainian artists and authors like Volodymyr Vakulenko, who was shot when Russian troops occupied his village.

The posters are stamped: "Cancelled. Because the author was killed by Russia."

The canal-side gardens of the Biennale are home to dozens of stylish national pavilions that operate as showcases for their owners. For all countries, but especially for autocracies like Russia, the bi-annual exhibition is a prime chance to exert some soft power.

In 2022, the curators at the Russian pavilion pulled out in protest at the invasion of Ukraine. Two years later, the building was loaned to Bolivia. But this time a Russian team has filled the space with an upside-down tree and experimental sound performances.

"This is our house, we come to our place," the pavilion's official commissioner Anastasia Karneeva replied, when I asked whether Russia had any place at the Biennale as it invaded Ukraine.

"I don't think about the protests. I am very busy," she dismissed my questions.

Karneeva's father is deputy head of Rostec, Russia's giant state weapons producer, and under sanctions but she didn't want to discuss that either.

"Can we stop this conversation? Thank you."

Russia's return to the Biennale is only partial: after the pre-opening events this week the pavilion will close. It's unclear whether that's down to the protests or the impact of sanctions.

But the performances are being recorded to be screened outside for the public.

That means the sound will drift a few metres down the path towards Ukraine's own contribution to the Biennale.

Right beside the main entrance, a sculpture of an origami deer cast in concrete hangs suspended on thick straps from a crane.

The work of Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova, the deer was first installed in Pokrovsk in the eastern Donbas when the front line with Russian forces was almost 40 kilometres away.

By 2024, Kadyrova had to evacuate her work to save it from occupation.

"We have a destroyed city that does not exist now. I hope this message is clear and people who visit Biennale can understand it," the artist told me in a recent interview in her studio in Kyiv.

Her deer has become a powerful symbol of displacement, too, sharing the fate of millions of Ukrainians.

"Pokrovsk [is] now an occupied city. A lot of people were killed there. But we saved this artefact. The question is how many artefacts were not saved in this war? How many other kinds of heritage were destroyed?" Kadyrova asks.

"This was a lively city. And it does not exist now because Russia came."

Additional reporting by Davide Ghiglione.