Politics in art curation

At big international shows, curators are putting politics in the room instead of pretending art hangs outside it. The 2024 Venice Biennale made that explicit with “Stranieri Ovunque — Foreigners Everywhere,” a central exhibition curated by Adriano Pedrosa. (labiennale.org) La Biennale said the 60th edition ran from April 20 to November 24, 2024, in the Giardini and Arsenale, and the central exhibition included 331 artists and collectives. Pedrosa’s stated focus was artists who are “foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diasporic, émigrés, exiled, and refugees,” shifting attention away from the usual Euro-American canon. (labiennale.org, universes.art) That curatorial choice landed inside a structure that is already political: the Biennale still runs through national pavilions. The Art Newspaper noted before the 2024 opening that war and geopolitics were set to shape the event, in part because countries use those pavilions to represent themselves on a global stage. (theartnewspaper.com) The Israel pavilion became the clearest example. ARTnews and Apollo reported in April 2024 that artist Ruth Patir and her curators kept it closed, posting that it would open only when a ceasefire and hostage-release agreement was reached. (artnews.com, apollo-magazine.com) Ukraine’s pavilion addressed Russia’s invasion directly, and calls to exclude Israel showed how quickly curatorial and institutional decisions become arguments about state legitimacy. The Art Newspaper reported that thousands had called for Israel’s pavilion to be cancelled, while Ukraine’s official presentation centered the ongoing war. (theartnewspaper.com) Critics also described the main exhibition itself as openly didactic rather than neutral. ARTnews said first impressions of the 2024 Biennale pointed to a show built around migration, indigeneity and identity, while The Art Newspaper wrote that Pedrosa’s exhibition combined “intimacy and violence” to undermine Western art-historical narratives. (artnews.com, theartnewspaper.com) The same pattern shows up across Middle East and North Africa programming, where galleries and fairs increasingly frame exhibitions around war, displacement, memory and power. Dazed MENA’s 2025 roundup highlighted shows in Ramallah, Dubai and Marrakech that centered resilience, oppression and identity rather than a detached formalist approach. (dazed.me) Some galleries state that politics plainly in their own materials. Zawyeh Gallery’s presentation for MENA Art Fair Paris in October 2025, “A Passage to Palestine,” said six Palestinian artists were brought together around home, memory and resilience, and tied those themes to artists living through dispossession and exile. (zawyeh.net) Others describe the region’s art scene as a challenge to social and political hierarchies. MENA Art Gallery says the artists it shows are “redrawing lines” around patriarchy, power and rights, language that treats curation as a political act as much as a market one. (menagallery.art) Institutions and curators do not all frame this the same way. Supporters say exhibitions should reflect wars, borders and inequality because artists live inside those systems; critics of heavily themed shows argue that large exhibitions can flatten art into message and turn national representation into a proxy fight over current events. (artnews.com, theartnewspaper.com) By the time the 2024 Biennale closed, La Biennale said it had sold 700,000 tickets, with 59% of visitors coming from abroad. The scale helps explain why curator choices in Venice, and in galleries across the Middle East and North Africa, now read less like backdrop and more like public positioning. (labiennale.org)