Israel's participation at the 2026 Venice Biennale has reignited calls for a boycott – two years after the country’s pavilion was closed at the same event due to protests.
Although the Israeli culture ministry has not officially announced its pavilion for this year, the sculptor representing the country, Belu-Simion Fainaru, told ARTnews that he is welcoming the opportunity.
The Haifa-based artist said his installation will not be on show at Israel's dedicated site in the Giardini because it is undergoing renovation. Instead, it will be staged in the Arsenale, the historic exhibition complex that also hosts national pavilions from countries including those of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
The news has drawn sharp criticism from the Art Not Genocide Alliance, an artist-led collective that helped organise protests during the 2024 Venice Biennale.
In a statement shared on its Instagram account, the group has renewed its demand for Israel’s exclusion, declaring: “No genocide pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2026.”
The group warned that if Israel is not removed it will mobilise “a full artist and audience boycott”.
“After more than 700 days of genocide and 77 years of occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, the Biennale’s decision to provide a platform to a state engaged in these atrocities cannot be tolerated,” the statement said.
Fainaru is opposed to a boycott. “Art is a place for dialogue, not for exclusion,” he told ARTnews. He said his installation is intended as a “vision of hope and human feeling, the total opposite of boycott and exclusion, giving space to everybody”.
The Venice Biennale, scheduled to run this year from May 9 to November 22, has consistently rejected demands to exclude recognised nations, stating that it does not have the authority to bar countries acknowledged by Italy. Similar protests were dismissed in 2024 by Italy’s then culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, who described boycott efforts as “shameful”.
Israel formally participated in the 2024 Biennale, but its pavilion never opened to the public. The artist selected that year, Ruth Patir, chose to keep it closed in protest until hostages taken by Hamas on October 7 were released and a ceasefire was reached.
Fainaru's pavilion, titled Rose of Nothingness, will centre on a large-scale installation inspired by poet Paul Celan’s notion of “black milk”. The work will feature 16 pipes dripping black water into a pool, with the number referencing transformation in Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition.
