Government officials in Azerbaijan have admitted that the President Ilham Aliyev had a hand in censoring the country’s entries to the Venice Biennale festival. The artwork of Aidan Salakhova included a replica of the Black Stone, a sacred Muslim relic, surrounded by a vagina-shaped marble frame. Aliyev, reportedly asked for several of Salakhov’s pieces to be covered by a black veil because he felt they might be considered “offensive to Islam”. Curators had previously claimed that Salakhov’s pieces were not on display because they had been damaged in transit.
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