Art Basel Reveals Exhibitor List for 2024 Swiss Fair

For the second time since it launched its unprovoked and violent attack on Ukraine in February 2022, Russia will not participate in the Venice Biennale, Artnews reports. The Biennale’s sixtieth edition is set to open in April. Back in 2022, Raimundas Malašauskas, who was to have curated the Russian Pavilion at the event’s fifty-ninth iteration withdrew in protest of Putin’s actions weeks after the assault was launched, as did Alexandra Sukhareva and Kirill Savchenkov, who were to have represented the country. This year Russia made no announcements regarding its plans for the pavilion, one of the coveted permanent structures in the Giardini, which will remain vacant, and, if 2022 is any predictor, patrolled by guards for the duration of the Biennale.

Ukraine, which does not have a permanent pavilion at the Biennale, will participate in the event this year, as it did shortly after the conflict with Russia began. Curated by Viktoria Bavykina and Max Gorbatskyi, the pavilion will feature work by photo and video artists Andrii Dostliev, Lia Dostlieva, Daniil Revkovskyi, Andrii Rachynskyi; multimedia artist Katya Buchatska; and pavilion architect Oleksandr Burlak. The exhibition will focus on “personal experiences of war, emigration, and assimilation in new societies and the transformation of language under the pressure of violence,” according to a press release.

Also of note, Israel will participate in the Biennale this year despite the continued conflict in which it is embroiled with Palestine. The country will be represented by artist Ruth Patir, whose exhibition is being organized by curators Mira Lapidot and Tamar Margalit. The Palestine Museum US, which presented a collateral event—that is, an event sanctioned by Biennale officials but taking place outside a pavilion—at the 2022 edition submitted a similar proposal for the 2024 iteration, but was rejected.