Antiwar artists are preparing to push back against Russia’s participation in the Venice Biennale

“A real truce”

On March 4, the organizers of the Venice Biennale published a press release listing Russia among the countries participating in the upcoming exhibition, which is set to run from May 9 to Nov. 22. According to the statement, the Russian pavilion will present a project titled “The Tree Is Rooted in the Sky,” featuring at least 38 artists and musicians.

Then, on Mar. 5, Biennale president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco called Russia’s return “a real truce” and an act of “foreign policy” — this despite the official position of the Italian government, which firmly supports Ukraine.

Protests over Russia’s return

The decision to allow the aggressor state back into the cultural space has provoked discontent both in Ukraine and among Kyiv’s allies.

After the press release was published, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and Deputy Prime Minister for Humanitarian Policy Tetyana Berezhna called on the organizers of the Venice Biennale to reverse the decision. Soon afterward, members of the platform of Russian democratic forces at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe joined the demand. In an open letter to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, they called for all official representatives of Russia to be excluded from the Biennale program “until such date as all aggression in Ukraine has ceased.”

The following day, the European Commission sharply criticized Russia’s return. A joint statement by Henna Virkkunen, Vice President for Tech Sovereignty, Security, and Democracy, and Glenn Micallef, Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport, emphasized that the Fondazione Biennale’s decision is “not compatible with the EU's collective response to Russia's brutal aggression” against Ukraine and threatened to suspend or revoke the Biennale’s funding.

In addition, petitions calling for Russia to be barred are actively circulating on social media. One of them has already gathered nearly 8,000 signatures, including those of European Parliament Vice President Pina Picierno, Russian opposition figure and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, Italian senators, professors from leading universities worldwide, and artists.

In response, Putin’s special representative for cultural cooperation, Mikhail Shvydkoy, urged Russia to participate despite Kyiv’s objections. He had previously stated that Russia had never left the Biennale and that it had “always been present in the Venetian cultural space.”

In a sense, this is indeed true. As an art producer who chose to remain anonymous explained to The Insider, “The Biennale didn’t bar anyone; it was the decision of the artists themselves and/or the Ministry of Culture” not to participate in 2022 and 2024.

Russia’s self-isolation after the invasion

In the years since the start of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has not participated in the Biennale; however, that decision was made in Moscow rather than in Italy. In 2022, in protest against the war, artists Kirill Savchenkov and Alexandra Sukhareva, who had already been chosen to represent Russia, refused to open the exhibition. During the Architecture Biennale in 2023, the Russian pavilion remained closed. At the 2024 Art Biennale, the building was rented out to Bolivia, and at the 2025 Architecture Biennale, it housed a project by a British architect.

How the Venice Biennale is structured

Established in the late 19th century, the Venice Biennale is considered one of the world’s leading contemporary art platforms. The exhibition alternates between the Art Biennale and the Architecture Biennale.

The Biennale is not a single exhibition but a system with several levels of participation:

• The main exhibition curated by the artistic director, who sends out personal invitations to artists
• National pavilions, curated by their respective governments
• And side events organized by museums, foundations, and galleries outside the national pavilion system.

Some countries, including Russia, have permanent national pavilions, while others do not.

A sovereign pavilion

The Russian pavilion was built in 1914, following a design by Aleksei Shchusev, the future architect of the Lenin Mausoleum that still sits on Red Square. The pavilion is located in the historic Giardini park, home to the core part of the Venice Biennale.

As senior counsel for Transparency International Russia told The Insider, this pavilion is state property, and preventing Russia’s physical presence in the building is unlawful:

“This pavilion is directly owned by the Russian state as a sovereign asset. Therefore, Russian representatives cannot be expelled from it, because customary international law prohibits seizure or sale of sovereign property.”

Under the national pavilion participation procedure, countries that already own a pavilion do not need to obtain approval from the president of the Venice Biennale in order to participate in exhibitions. Such a country effectively “confirms” its participation by appointing a “commissioner” and submitting a signed copy of the procedure to the Biennale.

In 2024, amid petitions calling for Israel to be excluded from participation due to its war with the Hamas terrorist group in the Gaza Strip, the Biennale leadership stated that it does not have the authority to exclude national pavilions of countries recognized by Italy, and that the decision to participate in the exhibition is made by the countries themselves.

The statement reads:

“La Biennale di Venezia would like to specify that all countries recognized by the Italian Republic may autonomously request to participate officially. Consequently, La Biennale may not take into consideration any petition or call to exclude the participation of Israel or Iran in the coming 60th International Art Exhibition.”

Art figures interviewed by The Insider note that they are not aware of any case in which the Biennale has denied a country’s participation, provided that it had a permanent pavilion and submitted a proper application.

At the same time, according to gallerist Marat Gelman, Russia’s decision to participate during the war is unwise:

“Shvydkoy has put the leadership in a difficult position. Now the entire Biennale will turn into a festival of projects against Russia, carried out by both Ukrainian and Russian artists. It will serve as a reminder of all external crimes and all domestic repression in the country. It would have been wiser to suspend participation during the war.”

Response planned by Russian antiwar artists

According to Gelman, Russian antiwar artists will be represented in Venice at a separate pavilion — that of Emilia Kabakov — but several artists, including Gelman himself, also plan to stage an antiwar demonstration outside the Russian pavilion. Some of them have shared their general plans with The Insider, without disclosing the details in advance.

Others have done so publicly. For example, Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, a member of the Russian Democratic Forces delegation participating in the PACE Platform for Dialogue, announced her plans to join antiwar Russian voices at the Biennale. “Pussy Riot is going to the Biennale with an alternative protest statement so we don’t burn with shame,” Tolokonnikova wrote on X.

In addition, the curator of the Ukrainian pavilion, Ksenia Malykh, has voiced plans to use Ukraine’s national participation as a platform to speak out against the legitimization of Russian aggression through culture. Actions at venues are also being prepared by the Ukrainian World Congress, which launched the campaign “Art Cannot Mask Atrocity.”

“The Tree Is Rooted in the Sky”

Titled “The Tree Is Rooted in the Sky,” Russia’s project is a series of musical performances involving singing, folklore, and experimental sound practices. The core image of the project is a tree, conceived as a symbolic living system of interconnections and cultural roots. The project is coordinated by the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music.

Since 2021, the commissioner of the Russian pavilion has been Anastasia Karneeva, co-founder of Smart Art and daughter of Rostec deputy director Nikolai Volobuev. The other co-founder of Smart Art is Ekaterina Vinokurova, daughter of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

The Russian project involves at least 38 musicians, poets, and philosophers. Among them are composer and improviser Alexey Sysoev, winner of the Golden Mask award for the music to the Full Moon theater production; composer Alexey Retinsky, who has collaborated with Teodor Currentzis; and the Toloka ensemble, which researches and performs Russian folk music.

This past February, Toloka’s appearance on the television show Nu-ka, Vse Vmeste! Khorom! triggered a scandal after jury members Sergey Lazarev and Nadezhda Babkina criticized their performance. Lazarev and Babkina faced online backlash over their presumed “Russophobia,” and calls to cancel them began circulating.

The list of this year’s Biennale participants also includes musicians from Global South countries, such as DJ Diaki from Mali, Brazilian DJ JLZ, and the Mexican project Atosigado.

An intellectual with a post-fascist past

Pietrangelo Buttafuoco has presided over the Biennale since 2024, heading the Exhibition Council, its key decision-making body.

In 2019, Buttafuoco wrote an article titled “Russia Is Not a Kingdom of Terror.” Published in Il Fatto Quotidiano — an Italian outlet often viewed as a mouthpiece for Kremlin propaganda — the piece described his impressions following a trip to the country.

In 2015, in another article for Il Fatto Quotidiano, Buttafuoco laid out his understanding of Putin’s concern for Muslims in Russia, writing: “While waging war in Syria, Vladimir Putin simultaneously protects Russia’s Muslim citizens by opening the largest mosque in Europe.”

Le Monde describes Buttafuoco as “an intellectual, a non-conformist convert to Islam, and a former member of a post-fascist movement.” Indeed, in his youth, Buttafuoco chaired the youth wing of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, founded by Giorgio Almirante, a minister in the government of Benito Mussolini. In 2018, Buttafuoco said of Mussolini: “We who love Mussolini do so to hate him even more… Among us, there are no new Mussolinis and never will be. He is the only one.”

Marat Gelman finds it difficult to predict whether Russia will ultimately be excluded under pressure from Ukraine and the EU, given that the European Commission’s approval is not essential for the Biennale. He adds:

“I consider the comparison with Israel somewhat inaccurate. They say, ‘Well, the U.S. is at war, and Israel is at war. They are not banned.’ The key difference is that Russia is not only an external aggressor but also represses art internally: it bans, censors, imprisons, and forces artists to leave the country. In other words, Russia does not represent Russian art as such, and banning Russia would not be a ban on Russian art. Russian artists, together with Ukrainians, are against Russia’s participation as a state.”