Ordinarily, the preview week ahead of the official opening of the months-long Venice Biennale, one of the art world's most prestigious events, is dominated by glamorous parties as countries prepare to open their dedicated pavilions and exhibitions to the crowds. This year, however, the Serenissima has been rocked by a flurry of demonstrations and protests, as geopolitics threatens to steal the limelight from hundreds of artists from around the world who have sought inspiration for the biennale's theme, In Minor Keys.
In the run-up to the 61st edition, nations threatened to boycott the biennale, and the five-member jury panel resigned after members stated they would not consider award entries from countries whose leaders were subject to international arrest warrants. The US-Israel-Iran conflict has also cast a shadow: just the day before the preview began, Iran announced it would not be participating.
But outside the polemics and politicking, one exhibition, entitled Gaza – No Words – See the Exhibit, stands out as being uniquely dedicated to a people’s suffering. Filling a grand palatial salon on the first floor of the 16th-century Palazzo Mora, the official Palestinian collateral event presents 100 traditional Palestinian tapestries, collectively displayed as the Gaza Genocide Tapestry. Each of the embroidered panels tells a story of suffering: crying children, starvation, bombed hospitals and fleeing refugees. Lining the walls and suspended between glittering Murano glass chandeliers, the work is a sobering manifestation of the situation for residents in Gaza.
The tapestries follow the ancient Palestinian tradition of tatreez, a distinctive form of embroidery that has been included in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List since 2021. In the Gaza Genocide Tapestry, the usual motifs like flowers and birds, often stitched to decorate ceremonial dresses, are absent. Here, tatreez is no longer used in celebration of happy occasions like weddings but to illustrate sombre images reflecting the ruin, suffering and death inflicted on Gaza and its people in recent times.
The exhibition was organised by The Palestine Museum, based in Connecticut. “Once the Biennale accepted our proposal to be one of the 31 Collateral events – a major achievement in itself – we began this ambitious project", curator and executive director of the museum, Faisal Saleh, tells me. "A hundred images, using photos, paintings and video clips, were selected to illustrate what has been happening in Gaza.
“We then contacted Palestinian women embroiderers, dispersed in refugee camps across Gaza, South Lebanon, Ramallah and Jerash in Jordan, and commissioned them to embroider each selected image on a standard piece of cloth, 80 by 50 centimetres, using a total of 55,000 stitches.”
Putting the Gaza Genocide Tapestry together, including funding from public sponsorship, has been an exercise in creative planning as well as artistry, Saleh explains. "Some 60 women have made the works, and it has taken an incredible logistics system just to get the pieces to Venice. The last one arrives today, just in time for the official inauguration after a torturous journey from South Lebanon, through Beirut during a brief ceasefire, and finally a direct European flight from Amman.”
For Saleh, these tapestries are a more powerful collective expression than the photographs on which they are based. “The way the tapestries are painstakingly stitched by hand takes two months of effort, skill, sweat and tears, sometimes working in terrible conditions," he says. “I am convinced this gives more value to the image when it is exhibited.”
Viewing the show is a sobering experience; each lovingly stitched square presents a jarring juxtaposition with the suffering it depicts. “For me, one of the most powerful tapestries depicts a burning child,” says Saleh. The tapestry was based on a painting depicting the death of 19-year-old Shaban al-Dalou by 31-year-old digital artist Mahasen Al-Khateeb, who was herself killed in a bombing in October 2024. "So as I say, each tapestry tells its own terrible story.”
The message is perhaps most succinctly expressed in one of the few tapestries depicting woven words, rather than an image. It shouts out: If I must die, you must live to tell my story.
Outside the exhibition halls, protests about the Gaza conflict have been direct. The art world's movers and shakers lined the Giardini’s main avenue, where about 60 artists exhibiting in the Minor Keys Biennale Pavilion participated in a Solidarity Drone Chorus, humming a song and taking part in a procession to protest against “artwashing”. The association Art Not Genocide Alliance organised a petition calling for Israel and Russia to be banned, signed by over 200 participating artists and curators, with a series of strikes and pavilion shutdowns planned during the Preview week.
But the Biennale has survived controversies like this before, and once the public starts streaming through the gates from 9 May to 22 November, art will once again take pride of place. As Faisal Saleh states: “The Biennale allows us to tell the Palestinian story to a global audience through the arts, to show what world leaders have allowed to happen to Gaza, and to demand justice and punishment for the perpetrators.”