More than 100 artists are threatening legal action against the Venice Biennale Foundation for ignoring their demands that the foundation withdraw their names from consideration for the “Visitors’ Lion” awards at the current edition over the inclusion of national pavilions by Israel and Russia. The threat is included in a new announcement published on e-flux.
A May 20 letter addressed to the foundation and its president, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, is published in the announcement. It is signed by some 67 artists whose work appears in curator Koyo Kouoh’s exhibition “In Minor Keys,” including prominent figures like Laurie Anderson, Alfredo Jaar, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Walid Raad. Also among the signatories are 39 artists representing their countries, including Denmark (Maja Malou Lyse, Chus Martínez, and Commons Accounts), Britain’s Lubaina Himid, and Austria’s Florentina Holzinger, all among the star national pavilions.
Kouoh died suddenly in May 2025. The Biennale announced the jury, invited by Kouoh and led by president Solange Oliveira Farkas, founding artistic director of the Videobrasil Biennial, this past April; its job is normally to designate winners of Golden Lions for the best presentations in the show. But the jury announced the following day that it would not consider for prizes the pavilions of countries charged with crimes against humanity, including Israel and Russia. A week later, the jury resigned en masse, providing no explanation except to say it was doing so “in acknowledgement” of its statement from a week before. (It was later reported that Israel’s artist, Belu-Simion Fainaru, had alleged racial discrimination and antisemitism by the jury and threated to take his claims to the European Court of Human Rights.)
The foundation responded by announcing the same day that instead of a Golden Lion, it would for the first time award “Visitors’ Lions,” determined by audience vote, to the best artist in “In Minor Keys” and to the best national pavilion.
The presentations by Israel and Russia came in for extensive and dramatic responses in the opening preview week, including a punk-rock protest by Pussy Riot and FEMEN outside Russia’s pavilion, an artists’ assembly in the Giardini that aimed to “sonically occupy space,” and a strike and pro-Palestinian march in the streets of the city.
Members of Pussy Riot and FEMEN outside the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale on Wednesday.
Brian Boucher
When the exhibition then opened on May 14, reads the letter in e-flux, attendees received Visitors’ Lion ballots including names of artists who had requested to be withdrawn from consideration. The artists sent another letter May 20, which they have now released to the press, saying they have received no official reply.
“We were shocked to see that, despite our explicit request that we had withdrawn our names from consideration, an email went out on May 14, 2026 to ticketed visitors who had entered both the Giardini and the Arsenale, inviting them to vote on the Visitors’ Lions awards,” say the artists. “The list of choices included the names of artists from ‘In Minor Keys’ and also those artists exhibiting in the national pavilions who have explicitly withdrawn their names from consideration. Not only is this confusing for visitors, it is blatantly disrespectful towards the artists who have made the request for removal of their names.”
The artists continue, “Our demand, therefore, is as follows: any name that appears as a signatory of this letter must be removed from any and all contexts involving the Visitors’ Lions awards, including but not limited to the ballot interface and any associated promotional or communications materials. If any votes have already been cast for a signatory of this letter, that vote must be disqualified.”
A Biennale spokeswoman said in an email to the New York Times that the foundation had placed the artists’ names on the ballot to “guarantee all visitors their freedom of expression,” adding that “any votes cast for artists or pavilions that signed the refusal will not be taken into consideration.”
