C the Visual Arts Foundation, with the support of its board of directors and staff, re-articulates the public commitment we made to the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) in 2021. In line with PACBI guidelines, we will (as paraphrased by Writers Against the War On Gaza):

1) Boycott all cultural products and events that are funded, commissioned, or sponsored by an official Israeli body.
2) Boycott complicit Israeli institutions.
3) Boycott normalization projects.

We do this because, as Shiv Kotecha and Rainer Diana Hamilton write in “PACBI Now,” “boycotts shorten the perceived distances between moral actors.” The Canadian state is deeply complicit in providing military and political support to Israel. In the period since October 2023, we have seen Palestinian solidarity across Turtle Island—including in our cultural sectors—increasingly censored and criminalized. Meanwhile, as Rana Nazzal Hamadeh and Alia Hijaab write in “Art as a Mirror: How Canadian Institutions Are Complicit in Silencing Palestinian Voices,” nearly “200 historical and cultural landmarks have been damaged or destroyed, and two of the four museums in Gaza have been levelled entirely.” We witness this colonial violence and identify its analogues within so-called Canada, from Wet'suwet'en land defenders who are fighting off the Coastal GasLink pipeline, to Six Nations of the Grand River’s ongoing defense of their unceded land across the Haldimand Tract, to Grassy Narrows First Nation’s fight against the government-sanctioned mercury poisoning of their homes, to the implementation of Bill C-5, which prioritizes extractive industries. The settler colonial project across the Americas is deeply imbricated with global imperialism: the maintenance of both structures relies on ongoing violence here on Turtle Island and abroad. As a cultural institution situated in so-called Canada, by participating in PACBI, we hope to, alongside our peers, be a part of a cultural formation that refuses complicity not only with routinized violence against the Palestinian people but also all Indigenous life.

PACBI targets institutions, not individuals, complicity, not identity, and is endorsed by the absolute majority of Palestinian cultural and mass movement organizations. According to PACBI guidelines, the boycott “subscribes to the internationally-accepted definition of freedom of expression as stipulated in the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).”

With this reaffirmation, we align our organizational and existing publishing values. We are honoured to be part of the groundswell of peer cultural organizations in Canada who recognize that PACBI is the floor, not the ceiling. This provides a starting point for our cultural sectors to be part of a horizon of change oriented towards a free Palestine.

The full guidelines for PACBI can be found here.

In solidarity,

C The Visual Arts Foundation

Comments and questions may be directed to board@cmagazine.com