Contemporary artist Nan Goldin said she kept an award-winning documentary about her life from getting a release in Israel as part of a years-long cultural boycott of the country.
That film, titled All the Beauty and the Bloodshed and directed by Laura Poitras, was well-received, winning the Venice Film Festival’s top honour in 2022 and subsequently receiving an Oscar nomination in the Best Documentary category.
In an interview with journalist Harron Walker that was published on Friday by n+1, Goldin stated that she deliberately kept the film from being released in Israel, however, because she “refused to let it be distributed” there.
“Personally, I’ve been on a cultural boycott of Israel for my whole life,” Goldin said. “I turned down speaking, teaching, and exhibition opportunities, including refusing to let my current retrospective go to Israel.”
She also revealed that, in 2018, she pulled a work from the Zabludowicz Collection, whose owners, the collector couple Anita and Poju Zabludowicz, “are Israeli arms dealers,” according to Goldin. (More than a decade ago, Poju’s company, the Tamares Group, was reported to hold shares in Knafaim Holdings, which has provided services to the Israeli Air Force, but a spokesperson for him recently said that Tamares has no current investment in Knafaim. The couple has stated that they support a “peaceful” two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.)
Goldin was among the many artists to sign a letter published by Artforum in October that called for Palestinian liberation and a ceasefire in Gaza, where more than 17,000 people have reportedly been killed in the past two months by Israeli airstrikes and a ground invasion. The letter was criticized in some corners because it initially did not contain mention of the October 7 attack by the militant group Hamas, which killed 1,200 Israelis and involved the taking of 240 hostages.
