Venice Biennale opens amid strike

The Venice Biennale is supposed to be the art world’s grand parade — national pavilions open, curators gossip, prizes land, and everyone pretends the logistics are under control. This year, basically none of that happened. The 61st edition opened to the public on May 9, but it arrived after a 24-hour strike, a jury walkout, and a widening protest over Israel’s participation. The art is there. Koyo Kouoh’s exhibition is there. But the machinery around it has clearly jammed. ### What actually opened? The main international exhibition is In Minor Keys, the show Koyo Kouoh developed before her death in May 2025. It runs from May 9 to November 22 across the Giardini, the Arsenale, and other sites around Venice. La Biennale says Kouoh had already set the framework, artist list, catalogue, graphic identity, and exhibition architecture, and her team carried the project through. (labiennale.org) ### Why was opening week so chaotic? Because the fight stopped being only about art. A coalition led by the Art Not Genocide Alliance called a 24-hour strike on May 8 to protest Israel’s inclusion and what organizers described as the broader labor and political conditions around the event. ArtAsiaPacific counted about 27 of the Biennale’s 100 national pavilions as fully or partly closed that day, while The Art Newspaper’s earlier count put the number nearer 18 as the action was unfolding — so the exact total depends on when you measured it. (labiennale.org) Either way, a big chunk of the show went dark. ### Which pavilions shut? A lot of prominent ones. Reports named Austria, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and others as joining full or partial closures. Some teams posted “We Stand with Palestine” signs. Others used shorter shutdown windows. The point was not subtle — participants wanted visitors to feel the interruption, not just read about it later. (artasiapacific.com) ### What happened to the prizes? The normal awards system broke before the public opening. The Biennale’s entire five-person jury resigned on April 30 after saying it would not award prizes to pavilions from countries whose leaders face International Criminal Court charges — a stance widely understood to target Israel and Russia. After that, the Biennale shifted to a visitor-vote system, with ticket holders choosing “Visitors’ Lions” and winners due on November 22 instead of during opening week. (artasiapacific.com) ### Did artists accept that workaround? Not really. More than 70 artists then withdrew from award consideration in solidarity with the resigned jury. The signatories included big names like Walid Raad, Alice Maher, Laurie Anderson, Pio Abad, and Alfredo Jaar, plus artists and curators from 22 national pavilions. So even the replacement prize structure is running without many of the people it was meant to honor. (opb.org) ### Where does Koyo Kouoh fit in all this? She is still the emotional center of the Biennale. The official show exists because her collaborators finished a project she had already substantially built. That gives the whole event a strange split-screen feeling — grief and care inside the exhibition, institutional rupture outside it. Even reports focused on the strike note that In Minor Keys stayed open through much of May 8 before the Arsenale closed later in the day. (theartnewspaper.com) ### So what’s the real story here? The real story is that Venice did open — but not on its usual terms. The exhibition survived. The old opening-week script did not. Visitors are walking into a Biennale where the art matters, but the protest against the institution has become part of the exhibition experience too. (labiennale.org)