The open crisis at the Venice Art Biennale worsens. When it finally seemed that with the opening to the public and the end of the protests against Russia and Israel, the Biennale would once again be simply a great showcase for international contemporary art, a group of more than seventy artists, including representatives of 22 national pavilions, have once again poured salt into a wound that has been festering for months. With just four brief lines in the specialized publication E-fluxalmost half of the creators present at the exhibition express their resignation from competing for the visitor’s Golden Lion awards, established by the president of the Biennial, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, after the resignation of the official jury on May 2. The artists who sign the statement and who include, among others, heavyweights such as Laurie Anderson, Alfredo Jaar, Walid Raad, Sammy Baloji and Carolina Caycedo and also Oriol Vilanova, the representative of the Spanish pavilion, say they have made the decision “in solidarity with the jury selected by Koyo Kouoh”, the artistic director of this edition of the Biennial, who died a year ago, in the midst of organizing the exhibition. In the official exhibition, 110 artists had been selected.
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