Pussy Riot crash Russia's party at the Venice Art Biennale

VeniceThe 61st Venice Art Biennale continues with fury. This Wednesday protests against the presence of Russia and Israel have been more forceful. As they had warned, more than 50 people linked to the activists Pussy Riot, with their faces covered with pink balaclavas, have occupied the Russian pavilion, along with a host of members of the Femen collective. The Italian police have been forced to close the pavilion while agents and security guards subdued the activists who had managed to enter. Outside, the tension continued: the protesters sang the song Desobeeix amidst a cloud of pink smoke and the Femen members advanced shouting slogans amidst a cloud of blue and yellow, the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

In a statement, one of the founders of Pussy Riot, Nadya Tolokonnikova, railed against the European Union: "Russia's best citizens are either imprisoned for actions against the regime and in favor of Ukraine, or they die in prison, while Europe opens its doors to Putin's officials and propagandists. If art is to represent a country at the Venice Biennale, a kind of Olympics of the art world, then artists imprisoned for their anti-war and pro-Ukraine stance are the true face of contemporary Russia." She also addressed the President of the Biennale. "While Pietrangelo Buttafuoco welcomes his Russian guests with champagne, drones and ballistic missiles are falling in Ukraine, and thousands of prisoners of war and political prisoners sit in cold cells. Their lives are not an abstraction; their lives deserve to be taken into account," the statement also says.

To reverse this situation, Pussy Riot makes a proposal: "If art is to truly overcome censorship, we propose a plan for imprisoned artists, current and former, to represent Russia at the Venice Biennale in 2028. All we need is for Russia's pavilion to be withdrawn from the hands of illegal terrorists who are currently waging the largest war in Europe since World War II and to be handed over to those who have spent years in the gulags of this oppressive regime and who explicitly support Ukraine's sovereignty." In the same statement, Inna Shevchenko of Femen is equally blunt: "Every Russian work exhibited this year stands on an invisible pedestal: Ukrainian blood. You will not find it in the catalog. But it is the only material that truly supports this pavilion."

The Russian response came very quickly: they mocked the protest with the publication of a video on Instagram where a group of people can be seen dancing inside the pavilion, among whom are two men with pink balaclavas, while the demonstration continued outside.

On the other hand, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco spoke about the issue at a press conference: "This world born of the French Revolution, the Enlightenment, and secularism has been turned into its absolute opposite: a laboratory of intolerance and demands for censorship, closure, and exclusion," Buttafuoco stated. "The Biennale is not a court; it is a garden of peace. We cannot close it, we cannot resort to boycotts as an automatic response. We have to debate. We can disagree, and we do so firmly," the president warned.

Regarding the Ukrainian representation, the most visible is the sculpture Origami Deer, by Zhanna Kadyrova, which can be seen hanging from a crane at the entrance to the Biennale. This deer has become a symbol of fragility and resilience, because in 2018 it was installed in a park on an old pedestal where a Soviet military aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons once stood. With the start of the Russian invasion, to protect it, the work was moved from Pokrovsk across the entire country, and is now in Venice as part of a European tour. In this context, this Friday afternoon the Biennale of Words - Dissent and Peace event is scheduled to take place, with the directors of the different areas of the Venice Biennale.

Actions against Israel

Hours later, another demonstration of about a hundred people took place in front of the Israeli pavilion, organized by the collective Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA). The protesters carried a banner with the slogan "No to'artwashing of genocide", they read manifestos and distributed leaflets with information related to the Palestinian humanitarian crisis caused by the war, which read: "Can you tolerate it? No to the genocide pavilion". Those responsible for the pavilion were forced to close for a few hours at midday. "There was a demonstration and the protesters are still in the venue; we closed to feel safe", said one of these officials.