"Ultimately, the question is not which states the Biennale should exclude. The question is whether an institution that cannot bear the weight of a single obligation, that responds to the naming of responsibility by dissolving the capacity for judgment, can claim legitimacy at all. The Biennale needs a restructuring so total that what would emerge would bear little resemblance to what currently exists. Beyond the imperial absurdity of national representation in art, it would need a legal form capable of fulfilling actual obligations to the city whose land it occupies, to the lagoon it is helping to destroy, and to the brutal political present." MUST READ: Antonia Majaca's text "What Did the Golden Lion Die Of? On Judgment and Disavowal at the Venice Biennale". Published by e-flux Notes on the first of May 2026. Click to find the link to the article.
"The gigantic cruise ships and gigantic exhibitions are not separate problems. The grandi navi and the grandi mostre are manifestations of the same mastodon tonnage passing through the same fragile membrane between land and sea, absorbing ever more tourist beds, temporary walls, exhibition carpets, and black boxes. The Venetians who fought to ban cruise ships from the Giudecca Canal, who occupy abandoned housing, who fight to keep schools and hospitals open, know this. It requires institutional effort to know nothing so consistently, for so long, about so much."
About Antonia Majaca