Chapter 7, From Banned to Embraced, provides an historical overview of South Africa’s relationship to the International Art Biennale in Venice.In 1968, protests at the Biennale changed how it took place. These changes included banning South Africa from exhibiting: a boycott of the apartheid regime. It was not until 1993, with the prospect of transition from apartheid to democracy, that South Africa was invited back to the Biennale.Through this invitation to exhibit at the Biennale, South Africa was being rewarded for political change.The chapter analyses correspondence between representatives of South Africa and the Biennale in order to chronicle the country’s appearances in the exposition between 1968 and 2013, and to reveal the complex national and international politics and diplomatic negotiations involved in becoming and remaining a member state of the Biennale. I argue that South Africa’s participation continues to be deeply affected by international and national politics; its long absence from the Biennale reverberates through the way in which it represents itself to the international community and establishes itself as a member state of this international organisation.

Chapter 8, Mapping Political Art-Scapes, examines the geo-politics of the International Art Biennale in Venice.It begins by mapping how the Biennale transforms the local city space of Venice into a global art-scape.The Giardini and the Arsenale house the majority of the 85 national pavilions – established member states own art embassies in the Giardini while probationary member states rent exhibition spaces in the Arsenale. Pavilions become proxies through which states present an image of themselves to the international community. I contrast South Africa’s 2013 national pavilion with that of the United Arab Emirates (the two states shared an exhibition space in the Arsenale) in order to show how comparisons between states are forced upon them by virtue of exhibiting in the Biennale. I argue that these art-scapes provide fertile ground for states to offer an image of themselves – images which are not necessarily perceived how states intend.