Some events do not end when they happen; they continue to move through people, conversations, silences, and the questions they leave unanswered. This is why I needed time before writing about the Venice Biennale.
Not out of hesitation, but because certain questions must be heard before they can be answered. I spoke to people who were there, people who took a stand and people who chose silence or absence. I tried to understand the reasons on both sides because every gesture, even a refusal, conveys a worldview.
And yet, beyond the interpretations, one thing remains undeniable: the historical significance of what happened. Not so much because of the event itself, but because it exposed a tension that has long existed within the art world and perhaps our own ways of living together. For years, the art world has existed in an almost elegant contradiction, speaking of freedom without having to bear its weight. But what happens when that freedom ceases to be mere curatorial rhetoric and becomes a concrete demand, real pressure and political responsibility?
Perhaps this is where the discomfort begins, or rather, where the struggle takes shape. Whenever someone attempts to shift the boundary between aesthetics and ethics, the institution suddenly finds itself exposed and forced to choose what it is willing to lose in order to remain consistent with the image it constructs of itself. When artists and collectives call for coherence between aesthetics and ethics, they are not necessarily seeking to destroy the institution. Perhaps they are trying to restore its meaning.
Collectives such as ANGA, Galassia, Vogliamo Tutt’altro, Sale Docks, Mi Riconosci and Biennalocene have been working towards this for years, engaging in a kind of stubborn resistance against the moral anaesthesia that so often permeates the art system. There is something profoundly human in their perseverance. A form of faith, even. They have the ability to keep putting
themselves on the line without any guarantee of change. I recognise that I sometimes lack this same strength and radicalism, too. The real question is: what form can an institution take when dissent runs through it rather than being merely contained within it?
I do not know if merging these worlds is truly possible. Perhaps some distance is necessary. Perhaps conflict is not the failure of dialogue, but its most authentic expression. It is perhaps precisely within the unresolved tension between power and the desire for transformation that art continues to find its vital urgency.