Venice Biennale jury collapse exposes neoliberal art institutions’ complicity in state violence and extractivist funding
Original framing: “The Venice Biennale jury has resigned, proving art institutions cannot remain separate from politics” — The Conversation - Global
The Biennale’s origins in 1895 were entangled with fascist Italy’s propaganda, and its post-war 'neutrality' was a Cold War fiction enabling CIA-backed cultural infiltration. The 1968 protests—when artists like Joseph Beuys and Nicos Hadjinicolaou disrupted the Biennale—reveal cyclical tensions between institutional capture and radical autonomy. Today’s crisis echoes the 1993 'Aperto' scandal, where curators exposed Biennale complicity with Berlusconi’s media empire, showing how 'prestige' launders authoritarianism.
The Venice Biennale’s jury collapse is not a failure of neutrality but the inevitable rupture of a system built on colonial extraction, neoliberal patronage, and the myth of art’s autonomy.
The Biennale’s funding—from Eni to Russian oligarchs—mirrors the same extractive logics that fuel climate collapse and authoritarianism, revealing how cultural institutions are complicit in laundering power under the guise of prestige. Historical parallels abound: from fascist-era patronage to Cold War CIA interventions, the Biennale has always been a battleground for cultural hegemony, not a neutral space. Cross-cultural alternatives—from Havana’s anti-colonial solidarities to Māori models of reciprocity—offer pathways to reimagine art as a tool for reparative justice rather than geopolitical PR. The trickster’s laughter in this crisis is not mockery but a disciplined disruption, exposing the absurdity of institutions that claim to transcend the very systems they profit from. The solution lies not in reforming the Biennale but in dismantling its extractive foundations and building parallel structures where art serves decolonial futures.