Biennial, Fazzolari: "The choice on Russia is a useless mess"

“The foundation The Venice Biennale enjoys wide autonomy and it was his autonomous choice to reopen the Russian pavilion, despite the contrary opinion of the Italian government expressed through the Minister of Culture”. This is the premise of the undersecretary to the Presidency of the Council Giovanbattista Fazzolaricontacted on the telephone byAgi on the topic of Biennale.

Fazzolari: “The Biennale made a mess”

“That this decision of Biennale was a pastrocchio – he adds – is also demonstrated by the fact that the Russian pavilion will remain closed on days open to the public and that during those days only films visible from the outside will be shown. And, from what emerged, all this would have been – notes Fazzolari – a trick devised from the foundation for circumvent sanctions against the Russia and the concrete impossibility of opening the pavilion”.

“Formal protest by 22 European governments”

“I remember – he remarks Fazzolari – that this story has sparked the formal protest of 22 European governmentsfrom the European Commissionof many citizens and even of numerous Russian dissidents. Dissidents who recalled that only artists appreciated by the regime and chosen by the Kremlin will be present at the Biennale, to the detriment of the many free Russian artists currently detained in Moscow prisons”, underlines the undersecretary to the Presidency of the Council.

“The task of the Biennale is to deal with art and culture”

“Controversies that the Biennale could easily have avoided, given that its institutional mission is that of deal with Of until e culture and nothing else”, concludes Fazzolari.