“The reasons for excluding Russian architects are incomprehensible. Any form of discrimination in relation to creativity is unfair.” According to the Secretary of State for Culture Vittorio Sgarbi comments on the presentation of the Architecture Biennale. “I add that there has been no dialogue with the government involving the Ministry of Culture to lead to this discriminatory decision, which should be decided or shared by the government and not the Biennial Presidency. And for the delegation concerned I don’t know. Politics – adds Sgarbi – must not interfere, but neither should they be overridden”.
“I will hold the President accountable hemlock this election, so that the government may share it and not suffer,” added Sgarbi. Sgarbi’s words come at the same time as the message of good wishes “to Roberto Cicutto and Lesley Lokko, on the sidelines of the presentation of the Architecture Biennale, which marks the start of a major Architects such as Paolo Portoghesi, along with the late Maurizio Scaparro, director of the theater department and re-founder of the Venice Carnival. These unique coincidences – he says – bring us back to the biennial of dissent wanted by President Carlo Ripa di Meana”.
For this reason he argues: “While attention to the complex African reality, riddled with horrific and forgotten wars, seems very appropriate, we fail to understand the obstinate insistence in the fields of architecture and music on the exclusion of victims of the regime such as e.g as in any case, it is also the Russian architects who are closed to the pavilion of the Biennale, which also prevents the participation of dissidents”.
Furthermore, “the very complexity of the problems of the African continent in the ‘Laboratory of the Future’, also in comparison with the analysis ‘Tropical Modernism: Architecture and power in West Africa’ (remember that Asmara, a city of fascist foundation, is for UNESCO World Heritage Site) forces – adds the Undersecretary of State – that the current experiences in connection with Putin’s regime are also known and discussed. Any discrimination in relation to creativity – says Sgarbi – is unjust and oppresses no less for politically correct motives of the oppressive power of the regime”. Referring to the fact that there was no dialogue with the government, Sgarbi specifies: “For the delegation that concerns me, I am not aware of that”. “I will ask President Cicutto to give an account of this decision so that the government may share it and not be subjected to it.”
“There Venice Biennale – is the response to the criticism of State Secretary Vittorio Sgarbi – would like to make it clear that national participations are an autonomous and independent initiative of the countries, which are requested directly from the Biennale by the competent government authorities of the respective countries. Russia last year decided to independently withdraw from the 2022 Art Biennale, while so far this year it has neither applied nor communicated that it would participate in the Architecture Biennale in its pavilion in the Giardini.” And he repeats: The Biennale “stays the meeting point between peoples through art and culture”.
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