We address the leadership of the Venice Biennale and the international art community in response to information about the possible resumption of Russia’s participation and the reopening of the Russian state pavilion.

We oppose this decision. In the fourth year of the full-scale war, the return of the Russian pavilion cannot be considered a neutral cultural act: it carries clear symbolic meaning and becomes part of the normalization of cooperation with an aggressor state.

In fact, the pavilion has not functioned since 2022, when artists and curators refused to participate in the exhibition. The Russian state did not formally withdraw. The closure of the Russian pavilion became possible as a result of the ethical response of the artistic community to the war.

In 2021, Anastasia Karneeva was appointed commissioner of the pavilion for eight years. She is the co-founder of Smart Art and the daughter of Nikolai Volobuev, a retired general and deputy chairman of Rostec (a Russian state corporation established in late 2007 to support the development, production, and export of high-tech industrial products for both civilian and military use). Her Smart Art co-founder, Ekaterina Vinokurova, is the daughter of Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. Taken together, these connections make it impossible to regard the project as an independent cultural initiative.

The rhetoric of the pavilion’s curatorial concept this year is particularly cynical. References to “peripheral voices,” “multilingual cultural polyphony,” and international exchange formally borrow the language of decolonial and postcolonial discourse. At the same time, Russia is currently waging a colonial war and destroying independent culture at home. Within the country, decolonial initiatives are being systematically criminalized: organizations such as “Asians of Russia,” “Aborigen Forum,” the International Committee of Indigenous Peoples of Russia, and the “Forum of Free States of Post-Russia” (along with 172 affiliated structures) were declared extremist or terrorist organizations in 2024.

When such language is used by the official cultural representation of a state conducting an aggressive war and suppressing independent cultural life, the critical vocabulary of resistance becomes an instrument for laundering political reputation stained by war and dictatorship.

The narrative of “art outside politics” is actively used by the Russian regime and parts of the art industry to normalize the presence of Russian state art abroad. Public statements by Mikhail Shvydkoy about Russia’s return to the Biennale confirm that the pavilion functions as an instrument of Russia’s hybrid war in Europe:

“This is yet another proof that Russian culture is not isolated and that attempts to ‘cancel’ it by Western political elites over the past four years have failed.”

Inside Russia, repression continues: exhibitions are censored, independent cultural institutions are closed, artists face criminal prosecution, and many have been forced into exile. Yet even outside the country, anti-regime cultural figures and activists face harassment and assassination attempts.

More than a thousand political prisoners — including dozens of artists — are serving sentences in the brutal conditions of Russian penal colonies. People die in detention as a result of torture and deliberate denial of medical care. The state eliminates political opponents: we remember the murders of Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov, Anna Politkovskaya, and Natalia Estemirova. Under conditions of systemic state violence, the idea of a neutral cultural representation of Russia is impossible.

The Venice Biennale positions itself as a space for international dialogue and critical reflection. Solidarity within the artistic community requires asking uncomfortable questions, critically analyzing institutional decisions, and resisting the normalization of state narratives.

We call on the Biennale’s leadership to take into account the political and ethical context, not to become a platform for the symbolic rehabilitation of a state that continues war and repression, and to ensure greater transparency regarding the conditions of the Russian pavilion’s possible return.

This letter is addressed first and foremost to the international art community, as well as to the Italian public, for whom the Biennale is an important part of cultural and civic life.

Silence at such moments also becomes a form of complicity.

The letter will be sent to the official addresses of the administration and press offices of the Venice Biennale.

Russian version: https://c.org/BFfWKQLRNX

Publicly supported by:

Vika Privalova — artist, theatre director, activist of the Feminist Anti-War Resistance

Diana Meyerhold — artist, theatre director, political activist

Nadya Tolokonnikova — Pussy Riot, artist, former political prisoner

Daria Serenko — writer, activist of the Feminist Anti-War Resistance

 Lölja Nordic — artist, activist of the Feminist Anti-War Resistance

(signatures are being updated)