JTA — A five-person international jury at the Venice Biennale says it will no longer consider entries from Israel or Russia in its award deliberations — though it didn’t name either country in its announcement.

The jury announced its decision on the online arts publishing platform e-flux last week. In a statement, the jury explained that it “will refrain from ⁠the consideration of those countries whose leaders are currently charged with crimes against humanity by ​the International Criminal Court.”

The ICC, located in the Hague, Netherlands, is an intergovernmental body that prosecutes international crimes. In 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity — charges they both deny.

The year before, the ICC issued a warrant for President Vladimir Putin on charges related to the unlawful deportation of children in Ukraine.

By excluding countries whose leaders have warrants out for their arrest, the judges could rule out Israel, which has faced widespread exclusion in the arts world, without explicitly doing so.

The judges tied their decision to the theme of the festival, “In Minor Keys,” which was chosen by the artistic director Koyo Kuouh, who died last year.

“As members of the jury, we also have a responsibility towards the historical role of the Biennale as a platform that connects art to the urgencies of its time,” their statement said, even as they said they accepted that there is a “complex relationship between artist practice and nation-state representation.”

They added, “We stand in solidarity to embrace Koyo Kouoh’s own curatorial statement: ‘In refusing the spectacle of horror, the time has come to listen to the minor keys, to tune in sotto voce to the whispers, to the lower frequencies; to find the oases, the islands, where the dignity of all living beings is safeguarded.’”

Other countries whose leaders are facing ICC charges include Sudan and Afghanistan, but neither has a presence at the Biennale this........

© The Times of Israel