Finnish leaders will not attend Venice Biennale if Russian pavilion opens
Finland's political leadership has said it will not attend the Venice Biennale if the Russian pavilion is opened, although some public officials will still visit the exhibition to support Finnish art and culture.
Source: ARTnews
Details: Finland's Ministry of Education and Culture has stated that Russia must not be allowed to take part in the international exhibition while its full-scale invasion of Ukraine continues.
Science and Culture Minister Mari-Leena Talvitie added that some Finnish public officials will still attend to support Finnish art and culture.
The European Commission has given the president of the Venice Biennale 30 days to resolve the issue of the Russian pavilion, otherwise the organisation may lose €2 million in funding.
After Russia was announced as a participant, Ukraine called on the organisers of the Venice Biennale to reconsider their decision on Russia's participation and to maintain the principled position of condemning the occupying country.
The European Commission later warned it could suspend EU grant funding for the Venice Biennale if Russia is allowed to reopen its pavilion this year.
Italy's Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli called on Tamara Gregoretti – the government's representative on the Venice Biennale board – to resign over Russia's participation in this year's exhibition. He said Gregoretti had not warned the ministry that Russia might be taking part.
The Biennale organisers later said that no rules had been broken by allowing the Russian pavilion to reopen and insisted that the exhibition must remain a place of dialogue, openness and artistic freedom.
Russia's participation in the 61st Venice Biennale
Russia will reopen its pavilion and take part in the Venice Biennale this year for the first time since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
More than 50 young musicians, poets and philosophers from Russia and other countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Mali and Mexico, will be involved in the pavilion.
One of the themes of the exhibition, titled "The Tree is Rooted in the Sky", is the idea that "politics exist within temporary dimensions, whereas cultures communicate in eternity".
The commissioner of the Russian project will be Anastasia Karneyeva, the daughter of Nikolai Volobuyev, a retired general and deputy director of the major defence corporation Rostec.
"This is further proof that Russian culture is not isolated and that attempts to 'cancel' it – undertaken for the past four years by Western political elites – have not succeeded," said Mikhail Shvydkoi, Russia's Special Representative for International Cultural Cooperation and a former culture minister.
The organisers said the event will feature five contemporary figures who "are very unpopular with their governments – the US, Israel, China, Russia and even the EU". There are also plans for a programme on Pavel Florensky, an Orthodox priest and philosopher who was executed during the Great Terror.
Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin has promoted Florensky as one of the thinkers who laid the foundations for the concept of the "Russian world" ("Russkyi mir") – the general idea of the superiority of Russian Orthodoxy, culture, language, etc.
Latvia's Ministry of Culture has submitted a statement to the Biennale Foundation calling for Russia's participation in the international art exhibition to be reconsidered. The statement was signed by 22 countries.
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