Armed guards, reparations and the lives of others: Venice Biennale 2024 – review

There’s less glitz and glamour, more a mood of solemnity and concern at the 60th edition of the Biennale, with revelatory work from Nigeria, Bulgaria and the global south living up to the festival’s provocative subtitle, Foreigners Everywhere…

Armed soldiers guard the Israeli pavilion, stamping out their cigarettes in the pale Venetian dust. The doors are locked. The artist probably had no choice but to close her installation, given the unending atrocities. A notice in the window states that the pavilion will only open “when a ceasefire and hostage release agreement is reached” –though Ruth Patir’s film on fertility is still hazily visible within. As one curator quipped, henceforth all art will be blackmail.

The joke is on the impotence of the gesture. The pavilion would have been picketed or attacked had it stayed open – thousands of artists have already tried in vain to have it closed, via open letter to the organisers – and who is listening in the Middle East anyway? As old Biennale lags observe, even Russia recused itself in 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine, and has loaned its pavilion to Bolivia this time around (though the doors were firmly locked there, too, on preview days).