The Jerusalem Biennale opened its seventh and largest edition on Thursday, presenting a city-wide contemporary art experience across Jerusalem, a city under military occupation. This event, spanning 21 venues, features over 250 Israeli and international artists in 42 exhibitions. It offers free entry to most exhibitions, with select venues requiring a standard fee. The Biennale is scheduled to run through November 12, aiming to draw audiences into a specific narrative of memory and identity within the occupied city.
Selective Narratives of Trauma
This year’s theme, “De Profundis” (From the Depths), is derived from Psalm 130 and explicitly explores memory, spirituality, and identity in the wake of post-October 7 collective trauma. Founder and creative director Rami Ozeri described the theme as a catalyst for movement, suggesting art creates a passage from the personal and collective subconscious toward expression, connection, and light. This framing centers a particular experience of trauma, omitting the ongoing violence and dispossession faced by Palestinians in Jerusalem and across the occupied territories. The narrative presented focuses on a singular event, rather than the continuous settler-colonial violence that defines daily life for many in the city.
The 2026 Biennale highlights several internationally acclaimed Israeli contemporary artists. Yehudit Sasportas will premiere “Mishpat Mokesh” (A Mined Sentence) on October 12 at the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum. Her video and sound installation reportedly reflects an exploration of buried histories, trauma, and the possibility of transformation and healing. Belu-Simion Fainaru is set to participate in the central exhibition, “Or Chozer” (Reflected Light). Hanita Ilan, who won the 2025 Rappaport Prize, will present a solo exhibition at Hamiffal Gallery. These venues operate within a city where Palestinian cultural institutions and spaces are routinely suppressed or face demolition threats.
Art in an Occupied City
The exhibition “Or Chozer” features 20 artists engaging with Mordecai Ardon’s utopian windows, questioning how to sustain a vision of peace amid brokenness. At the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, another exhibition, “Open Wound,” brings together 14 Israeli and Diaspora artists to explore the "borderless reverberations" of October 7. While these artistic endeavors speak to concepts of peace and healing, they do so within a context where the fundamental injustices of military occupation and apartheid remain unaddressed by the event's stated aims. The focus on "brokenness" and "wounds" is presented without acknowledging the root causes of this fragmentation: the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people.
The seven-week program includes gallery discussions, artist and curator talks, guided tours, workshops, performances, and special events. These gatherings are intended to give audiences opportunities to engage directly with the artists and ideas behind the artwork. Organizers describe the Biennale as a form of communal prayer reaching for renewal and hope. However, this vision of renewal and hope is articulated within a framework that appears to normalize the occupation of Jerusalem, presenting a cultural event that implicitly asserts Israeli sovereignty over a city whose status is fiercely contested under international law. The absence of Palestinian voices or perspectives in the description of the event further underscores this selective narrative. The Biennale's expansive reach across 21 venues in Jerusalem, without acknowledging the city's occupied status, serves to reinforce the settler-colonial project.