‘That which is not a mosque’: Disturbing place at the 2015 Venice Biennale

This paper takes as its starting point the forcible closure of an art exhibit at the 2015 Venice Biennale in order to illustrate wider dynamics of rising Islamophobia across Europe today. THE MOSQUE was the Icelandic national contribution to the Biennale, an exhibit that lasted only two weeks before being shut down by the local authorities for ‘public safety reasons’. Presented in its press release as ‘merely a visual analog’ of a mosque, the installation was made ‘real’ as the Venetian Islamic community began using it as a site for gathering and prayers, an all-too-real performance that sparked protests and brought the installation’s closure. The fate of THE MOSQUE is a compelling story that speaks to a series of broader struggles over visibility and invisibility, and over who and what has the right to appear in the landscape of a European city. It speaks to the phantom menace of a fetishized Islam that is haunting Europe today, as nativist and anti-immigrant movements mobilize against perceived threats to imagined urban orders.