More than 100 artists taking part in this year’s Venice Biennale are threatening legal action against the art exhibition’s organizer if it does not remove their names from a public vote to pick the event’s best artists.
The group says it is asking to be excluded from the prizes “in solidarity with” the jury of professionals that resigned in late April several days after announcing that it would not give any awards to artists representing countries whose leaders are being investigated by the International Criminal Court.
The group announced the potential legal action in a news release on Wednesday. Last month, its members wrote twice to the Biennale asking it not to consider them for the so-called Visitors’ Lions awards, but received no detailed response. As a result, the news release said, the group plans to “begin next steps toward legal action.”
Uriel Orlow, a Swiss artist who is part of the group, said in a video interview that the Biennale was disrespecting artists by not removing their names from the ballot, and visitors by allowing them to vote for artists who don’t want to receive the awards. He said the public vote was “wasted, essentially.”
A Biennale spokeswoman said in an email that the organization had kept the artists’ names on the ballot to “guarantee all visitors their freedom of expression” when voting. She said that “any votes cast for artists or pavilions that signed the refusal will not be taken into consideration.”
The spokeswoman said this did not give visitors a false impression. “The point is not about winning but allowing, for the first time, the public to express themselves,” she said.
Orlow said the group of artists had “been in touch with lawyers” who said it had grounds to take action against the Biennale. “We have not signed up to this. It’s not part of our contracts,” he added.
The Venice Biennale is one of the art world’s most important events. Held every two years, it consists of a major group show and over 100 smaller exhibitions hosted in national pavilions.
During each edition, a jury of art professionals typically gives out awards to the best artists in the main exhibition as well as the prestigious Golden Lion award to the best national pavilion.
Some of the highest-profile artists in this year’s Biennale are among those asking to be removed from consideration for the public awards, including Florentina Holzinger, the artist whose Austrian pavilion show, in which a naked woman rides in circles on a Jet Ski inside a flooded building, has garnered widespread attention.
Other signatories include artists representing Britain, France, Italy and Ukraine.
The furor around the awards began before this year’s Biennale even opened on May 9. In April, this year’s prize jury, led by Solange Farkas, a Brazilian curator, announced that it would not give awards to artists from countries whose leaders are being investigated by the International Criminal Court, a move that effectively excluded artists representing Israel or Russia from consideration.
Shortly afterward, Belu-Simion Fainaru, a sculptor who is representing Israel at this year’s event, said in an interview with The New York Times that he had consulted lawyers about the jury’s decision, arguing that it discriminated against him.
Then, on April 30, the jury resigned without disclosing its reasoning, and the Biennale announced that it was replacing this year’s jury prizes with two Visitors’ Lions awards for the best pavilion and the best artist in the main show.
As the Biennale opened to the public on May 9, about 70 artists wrote to the event’s organizers asking to be removed from consideration, but their names still appear on the ballot that is emailed to visitors.
Nina Katchadourian, an American artist who is a member of the group, said in a video interview that she had learned that her name was still included when her husband received the ballot after visiting the exhibition. She said she recalled thinking, “My gosh, that’s strange my name is still on it.”
The artists in the group sent a second letter to the Biennale on May 20 again asking for their names to be removed and clarifying that they opposed the way the public vote had come about.
“We have no issue with the concept of allowing visitors to vote for awards,” the letter said, “but to create Visitors’ Lions awards at this stage is a deflection from the jury’s resignation, and in direct contradiction to the process we all agreed to when we accepted the invitation to exhibit our work.”
“This is something we want no part of,” the letter added.
Visitors to the Biennale do not appear to be aware of the furor. Orlow, the Swiss artist, said he had recently received an Instagram message from someone who said they had just voted for him for a Visitor’s Lion. “I feel awkward about that,” Orlow said.
Shirley Moneyhon, an Israeli artist who visited the Biennale last month and posted about her trip on Instagram, said in an email that she had voted for the Dutch pavilion without realizing that the show’s artist, Dries Verhoeven, was among those asking to be excluded.
“If someone has explicitly withdrawn from a competition, it seems strange to keep them in the voting process anyway,” Moneyhon said. “People generally assume that when they are asked to vote, all the listed participants are actually eligible,” she added.
