Across Venice, Artists Defy Censorship to Mourn and Memorialize Gaza
ARTnews reports that the 2026 Venice Biennale’s main exhibition, “In Minor Keys,” foregrounds mourning and the war in Gaza, beginning with a poem by Palestinian poet and professor Refaat Alareer—“If I must die / you must live / to tell my story”—after Alareer was killed by an Israeli airstrike in December 2023. The article highlights works including Theo Eshetu’s “The Garden of the Broken-Hearted” (2026), featuring a live olive tree mounted on a rotating dais with projected video, and notes Eshetu’s discussions of mourning with the late curator Koyo Kouoh. More direct references include Mohammed Joha’s watercolor series “No Shelter 12-29” (2025), Manuel Mathieu’s mixed-media painting “GENOCIDE” (2026), and Avi Mograbi’s installation “Between a River and a Sea” (2026), which juxtaposes 1938 business directories with Gaza Yellow Pages from 2023. The piece also notes protests around the Biennale’s opening, including opposition by as many as 100 artists to the inclusion of the Israeli Pavilion, while stating that some of the most direct treatments of the conflict occurred outside the Biennale’s official venues.
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This story was covered in Censorship Clashes and a Market Reset Shock