![\"Five](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Elegy_Gabrielle-Goliath-2026-courtesy-of-the-artist_-photo-Luca-Meneghel_4.jpg?w=400\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\tThat was not always meant to be the case. Last year, Gabrielle Goliath, who showed in the main exhibition at the 2024 Biennale, was chosen to represent South Africa at its pavilion in the Giardini with a new edition of her ongoing performance series,\u00a0Elegy<\/em>, which has honored the victims of the South African femicide, as well as the Herero and Nama genocide in the early 1900s. In the work, a diverse cast of women, one after another, hold a single note as a lament for the dead. However, when Goliath\u2019s proposal called for a new version of\u00a0Elegy<\/em>\u00a0that mourned Gazan poet Hiba Abu Nada\u2014who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in October 2023\u2014alongside other murdered Palestinians, culture minister Gayton McKenzie pulled the plug.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIf you read the minister\u2019s letters\u2014the first threatening letters I started getting in December\u2014he very explicitly said that the aspect that deals with femicide in South Africa and the Ovaherero and Nama genocide is acceptable,\u201d she told ARTnews <\/em>in an interview during the Biennale\u2019s vernissage week. \u201cBut you need to remove the aspect that deals with Palestinian life.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tGoliath sued McKenzie to get the commission reinstated in January, but a judge declined to reverse the decision. In the lawsuit\u2019s wake, however, several organizations banded together to present the work in the city anyway, at the Chiesa di Sant\u2019Antonin, thanks to the Patriarchate of Venice. At the 12th-century church, the new iteration of\u00a0Elegy<\/em>\u00a0mourning Palestine occupies five channels, while previous editions mourning the femicide and the Namibian genocide take up one and two, respectively. <\/p>\n \n\tThe acoustics of the church carry the voices of Goliath\u2019s women as they endeavor to hold that single note in honor of the dead. Sometimes, the voices fuse into a collective, while at other times they differentiate, with one singer stopping to take a breath as another takes up her lament. The solemnity of the space, and the juxtaposition of Black and Brown bodies on the screens beneath the idealized white Christian ones in the church\u2019s murals, clarifies the series\u2019s intervention.<\/p>\n Elegy<\/em>\u00a0appears in a brochure produced by the Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA), an international group of artists, curators, writers, and cultural workers that have led protests against Israel at the Biennale in 2024 and this year, including a 24-hour strike that closed over a dozen pavilions on Friday. That brochure, available alongside other protest materials at Venice activist art space Sale Docks, excoriates various countries for their \u201ccomplicity\u201d with Israel and lists\u00a0Elegy<\/em>\u00a0in its \u201cPalestine Solidarity in Venice\u201d section. Also appearing in that section is another exhibition that arose out of an act of censorship, \u201cTaring Padi: People\u2019s Liberation Collective Banners, 2023\u20132026.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn 2022, the Indonesian artist collective Taring Padi was thrust into a political maelstrom when their banner\u00a0People\u2019s Justice<\/em>\u00a0(2002), on view in an already fraught Documenta 15, was covered by Kassel officials and later dismantled. Many had argued that the banner, which largely meditates on the violence of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, contained antisemitic caricatures.<\/p>\n \n\tIn a roundtable talk on Thursday at Sale Docks, also the venue of the exhibition, Alexander Supartono, a member of Taring Padi, framed the new works on view as a direct result of the Documenta experience, saying that not long after that work was removed, the collective held a talk titled, \u201cWhat to Do With the People\u2019s Justice<\/em> Banner?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThat question was not rhetorical. It was genuine,\u201d Supartono said, appearing via live video at the talk. \u201cWe really didn\u2019t know what to do with the banner. What we did know was that the struggle for equal justice had to continue, and it had to continue in a way that was progressive and inclusive.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn 2023, according to Supartono, the collective began developing a new series of People\u2019s Justice<\/em> banners, in collaboration with other organizations, collectives, and communities such as the Noongar people of Australia and MST, the Brazilian Landless Workers\u2019 Movement. Six of the nine banners produced out of that effort appear in the Sale Docks exhibition.<\/p>\n \n\tThe centerpiece of the show is no doubt\u00a0People\u2019s Liberation<\/em>, produced in collaboration with Italy-based think tank Institute of Radical Imagination from December 2025 to March 2026. In its three-part structure, notched at the top with the title, the banner seems defiantly modeled after the dismantled\u00a0People\u2019s Justice<\/em>\u00a0(2002) banner, as well as a Palestinian flag. On the left side of the banner, a red fist rises skyward out of the rubble of Gaza; on the right, a green one that recalls an olive tree. In the center, a diverse crowd of black-and-white figures, many wearing keffiyehs, appear united in resistance above the phrase \u201cAbolish Fascism, Organize Autonomy.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe intention of the show, per Supartono, is \u201cto show how we can transform that which has been condemned and dismantled into a platform of political education, political occupation, political propaganda, and political associations.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAlongside the Taring Padi exhibition is a presentation of charcoal drawings by Gaza-born artist Mosaab Abusal, who speaking through a translator at the roundtable, said that the works, which depict emaciated bodies often in repose or death, are not a \u201crepresentation of reality\u201d but rather a document of reality, Abusal\u2019s experience of trauma transmitted directly into the rough, jagged charcoal lines of the drawings.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe charcoal documents the trauma and trembling that inhabits the body,\u201d Abusal said, as he explained how he struggled to reconcile what value art can have in the face of extreme acts of violence like those he had witnessed in Gaza.<\/p>\n \n\tThe most striking treatment of the conflict in Venice was at Palazzo Mora and Palazzo Bembo, where the Palestine Museum US, a Connecticut-based institution founded by Palestinian American businessman Faisal Saleh, staged a presentation as part of the European Cultural Centre\u2019s own biennial exhibition \u201cPersonal Structures.\u201d Acting as a de-facto Palestine Pavilion (only states recognized by Italy can participate in the official Biennale), the Palestine Museum\u2019s presentation, titled \u201cGaza\u2014No Words\u2014See the Exhibit,\u201d presents 100 works of tatreez<\/em>, a Palestinian embroidery practice, created by women artists in refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, and the West Bank. Collectively, the works form the Gaza Genocide Tapestry<\/em>. (The museum had previously commissioned Gaza-based artists to produce tatreez, but that has become impossible for obvious reasons.)<\/p>\n \n\tWhereas traditional tatreez is used to embroider patterns on garments, the tatreez in the exhibition depict images of the war on Gaza since 2023, many of which first appeared on social media and have since become iconic. The tatreez is done so intricately\u2014with each work taking an expert two-and-a-half months to produce\u2014that at the right distance they appear indistinguishable from a photograph. The images, which variously depict a student engulfed in flames from an airstrike, a man holding his dead granddaughter, and a mass grave, among others, are journalistic in their precision: no artistic liberties, just precise reproductions. In the exhibition, surrounded by 100 of them, hung on white cloth in a grid, the horror of the conflict is irrefutable.<\/p>\n \n\tIn one of the few tatreez that isn\u2019t drawn from a news photograph or an image posted to social media, the opening words to Alareer\u2019s poem appear, paired with a kite, a symbol for the poet of hope.<\/p>\n \n\tAt the exhibition\u2019s opening last week, Saleh described the transformative effect the work had on many of the women commissioned for the piece. \u201cWe received a few letters after they finished their work,\u201d he said. \u201cOne told us that it was really difficult to look at the images day in and day out. She said that the women were so depressed by all the news, but that the work had restored their dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBut as matter-of-fact as the exhibition was, it still had the potential to provoke. Just as Saleh and I began to speak, two Israeli artists, one of whom said she was also presenting work nearby, interrupted to speak with Saleh. At first, they seemed to find common ground: all three were born just after Israel\u2019s founding; Saleh and the artist had both studied at the same university in Jerusalem; they all could agree the occupation was a terrible thing for all parties involved. But the longer they spoke, the more the conversation devolved, as the artist turned to exhort me to see the conflict from \u201cboth sides,\u201d that it was a \u201ccomplicated situation,\u201d that Palestinians \u201ccan\u2019t judge\u201d Israelis, and that Israelis \u201ccan\u2019t judge\u201d Palestinians. The conversation ended amicably, if only, it seemed, through Saleh\u2019s herculean restraint.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe important thing is, the only way to solve this problem is if you and I become equal,\u201d Saleh said gently. \u201cIf you can convince everybody on both sides of that, then you have a good starting point.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cBut, somehow, that\u2019s utopia,\u201d the artist responded.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/venice-biennale-artists-censorship-palestine-israel-1234784973\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/theo-eshetu.jpg?w=1024″] Entering the main exhibition of the 2026 Venice Biennale, \u201cIn Minor Keys,\u201d from the Arsenale, the first artwork one encounters is a poem. \u201cIf I must die \/ you must live \/ to tell my story,\u201d the poem by Palestinian poet and professor Refaat Alareer begins. Those lines became a rallying cry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1933046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1933046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1933046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1933046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1933046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/saledocks.jpg?w=400\")
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