Fiction of Neutrality: Secondo Movimento
Beniamino Foschini and Victor Sternweiler on the latest turbulence around the Venice Biennale, as of May 9, 2026. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
VS: I’ve been sharing a lot of news with you over the past few days, partly in disbelief, as the main topos of this year’s art world simply refuses to stop being news. What do you make of the most recent events?
BF: As we anticipated, the polemics surrounding the Biennale have evolved since our last conversation, with the discussion about the national pavilions and how art is framed by and in them taking center stage. The jury stated that they would “refrain from considering those countries whose leaders are currently charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court,” and then resigned. I thought it was a protest against the Biennale's decision to allow the Russian Federation to participate with its pavilion. In a typically Italian, populist, post-Berlusconian response to the resignations, the Biennale introduced a gimmick: Visitors could vote for their favorite artist or exhibit, as if on a reality TV show. However, we now know precisely why the jury resigned: Israeli artist Belu-Simion Fainaru threatened to sue them. In any case, who can blame the jurors? Is serving on a Biennale jury worth the thousands of euros in legal fees?
At his press conference on May 6, Biennale’s president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco said, "If the Biennale started selecting works [based on] passports, it would cease to be what it has always been: the place where the world comes together." The issue of the "passport" evokes the idea of politicization, which Buttafuoco claims would jeopardize what the Biennale "has always been." Therefore, he suggests that the Biennale must remain this way forever: linear and timeless. Any critical choice against this idea would, he claims, "undermine the stability of cultural institutions." It's Conservative Agenda 101, masked by the right wing's vulgar use of 'common sense.'
VS: Frankly, I think I’ve been naive about this. I thought the dust would settle, but now it seems to have become a race to prove who occupies the ultimate moral high ground.
As for the Israeli artist: I agree with him that the ‘quality of art’ should not be judged by race, etc. But participating in a nation-state pavilion while asking the jury to ignore that very framework seems rather pathetic. This is exactly what we criticized before: the Biennale cannot escape the nation-state logic on which it is built.
As for the jury resignation: inconsistencies were already mounting. In their “Statement of Intention,” they acknowledged the Biennale’s “complex relationship” between art and nation-state representation (“particularly the way this relation binds artists’ work with the actions of the state they represent”), while also declaring their commitment to “the defense of human rights.” I was like: good luck with that!
As for the visitors' vote: I initially thought it might be a very interesting experiment. I was bemused to learn yesterday that another e-flux announcement had been published by participating artists who wished to withdraw from being voted on by the 'visitors’, in solidarity with the resigned jury. I keep wondering who is doing the back-office work of collecting all the signatures for these e-flux letters. :D Once again, neither curators nor artists seem to trust the wider audience’s value judgments about art; and, of course, only politicians could come up with such an idea in the first place.
As for Buttafuoco’s statements: he fantasizes that non-exclusion preserves ‘universality’—that without it, the Biennale would “cease to be what it has always been: the place where the world comes together”—as if such all-embracing openness were self-evident and unequivocally desirable. His critics’ counter-fantasy is that exclusion can purify the institution of complicity. Both attempt to reconcile contradictions that the Biennale can only stage, not resolve.
I hope jury voting is abolished once and for all. As Arthur Rubinstein said, “nothing in art can be the best”. For that matter, the awarding of prizes for ‘the best…’ is itself a classic game of nation-state doctrine: us against them, a competition over who is superior—see the Olympics, Football, or the Eurovision Song Contest. Such competition is geared toward preventing people from uniting around causes beyond the nation-state; it dictates who counts as ‘us’.
BF: I have the impression that, as you often say, all these signed letters are "preaching to the converted." I can just imagine the endless pats on the back. It's as if it's now customary for each institutional exhibition or event to incorporate its own institutional or infrastructural critique as a 'parallel event.' I found the documentation of the May 8 strike by cultural workers at the Biennale to be more impressive. It not only focused on political protest (genocide in Palestine), but also on economic and labor issues. The art world fancies itself and sells the idea of being paid for work with parties, yet the art industry is based on poorly paid jobs.
At the other end of the spectrum, I am bewildered by Buttafuoco and his relentless call for dialogue and openness. He presents himself as the champion of pluralism against the ‘bad guys’ in the Italian and EU governments. This may seem grotesque to some, but it's relatively easy to deconstruct. Exclusion and pluralism are tricky terms, but the patterns of thought that use them are recurrent. For those unfamiliar with him, Buttafuoco is not only a public official appointed by Prime Minister Meloni, but also a writer, journalist, and pious man aligned with the right wing. Right-wing intellectuals' appeals to pluralism are not new. Not coincidentally, they never invoke it in terms of including 'minor' or 'oppressed' voices. Instead, pluralism is invoked to combat the politicization of culture and to maintain a linear narrative. Thus, pluralism serves to reproduce the structures of power and defend cultural and social order.
VS: Interesting observations. That reminds me of the culture minister of Hessen during the Bundestag hearings on 'documenta fifteen', when she more or less said to Ade Darmawan: “That is not what people want to see.” :S
Hopefully, La Biennale di Venezia has been pushed to the point where it must either dissolve or reinvent itself. We may finally be living in interesting times. :)
BF: Unlike you, I'm skeptical that those involved are interested in transformation. They all seem to be defending their ground, choosing spectacular polarization over tentative changes. Still, I prefer your standpoint to mine.