South Africa Withdraws from 2026 Venice Biennale After Court Ruling

South Africa has withdrawn from the 2026 Venice Biennale, leaving its national pavilion empty after a court dismissed a lawsuit by artist Gabrielle Goliath over the cancellation of her proposed exhibition. The decision, announced by the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture, follows a dispute that began when Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie halted Goliath's participation in January, citing concerns that her artwork focused too heavily on global issues rather than South Africa's own narrative.

Goliath, selected unanimously by an independent committee in December alongside curator Ingrid Masondo, planned to present a new iteration of her ongoing performance and video series, Elegy. Initiated in 2015, the work mourns victims of violence, including those affected by femicide and attacks on LGBTQ individuals in South Africa, as well as the early 20th-century Herero and Nama genocide in what is now Namibia. For the Biennale, the artists intended to include a section honoring Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada, killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in October 2023, as a tribute to lives lost in the ongoing conflict there.

McKenzie, in a letter to the organizing nonprofit Art Periodic,...