A rumour has been going around the art world that SA will not be participating in the Venice Art Biennale 2026. I was told this separately by art contacts in both Cape Town and Johannesburg during calls discussing the direction I could take for a research dialogue in the cultural industries.
As countries of the G7 nervously react to the Iran-Israel war and commit 5% of their GDP to defence spending amid escalating conflict and cuts to arts and culture programmes, I have been wondering more often what art is for in a time of war. And also what art is for more generally.
As such, the simpler research question I have been pondering is whether SA can afford the apparent economic and political luxury of art amid so much global uncertainty and so many pressing domestic priorities. The flipside of that question is whether we can afford not to invest in art. Could economic policy be reimagined just now to increase spending on arts in SA and the wider African continent?
In the UK the creative economy contributes 5.2% of GDP to the economy and 7% of all jobs, according to the House of Lords library. It also attracts tourists and builds important diplomatic bridges with Asian countries such as South Korea and China. South Korea in particular has been culturally visible, with K-pop at the apex of its meteoric soft power export trajectory, while securing youth mobility visa agreements with the UK.
SA and Egypt are the only two African countries with a permanent pavilion at the prestigious Venice Biennale. So, SA’s leaning out, whether true or not, is significant. It also invokes necessary questions about the Venice Biennale and who it is for, and if an event can really be international if only two of Africa’s 55 countries participate with agency.
Venice has recently aimed to address these slights, appointing the late Swiss-Cameroonian Koyo Kouoh curator for 2026. Kouoh, who passed away in May, powerfully asserted her voice as African and cosmopolitan on the global stage.
So too did the legendary Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor, who also curated the now defunct Johannesburg Biennale, which only lasted two editions, 1995 and 1997, amid funding concerns and insufficient relevance to the local community.
Similar speculation swirls around SA’s potential withdrawal from Venice: lack of funds and a recentring of African countries towards their own priorities (which often also includes solidarity with Palestine) amid peripheralisation at international cultural forums.
Indeed, African events such as the Lagos Biennale, coming up to its sixth edition, make vital interventions for the cultural power of African countries on the global stage while decentring not only the grammar but also the locale of the visual arts from Europe.
But it is not only for economic and geostrategic reasons that SA should continue to invest in the arts. Celebrating the arts and national culture are an important part of nation-building and attracting global talent.
One of the main reasons I live in London is for the vital arts and culture community. Despite the outrageous cost of living, what keeps me here is the cornucopia of music, poetry, literary and visual art events on offer every day.
Each Wednesday I play chess at the same members club and on other days I protect time to visit the many free festivals celebrating artists from every culture on earth.
The arts are a balm to the soul, with poetry read at funerals and a fuel for celebration with live bands playing at weddings. They offer a reprieve from the unrelenting, incomprehensible sadness and aggression in the news all around us at this time, and a way to interpret and process the catharsis of conflict, grief and loss.
• Masie is a visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics’ Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa.
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