This Florida Law Is Censoring and Punishing Pro-Palestine Artists

In late September, during the last stages of preparing for an exhibition, Miami artist Les Gomez-Gonzalez received notice that they had to sign a vendor registration form in order to participate in “Ebb & Flow: Exploring the Womanhood Continuum” at the Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery in Pembroke Pines. The artist was initially invited to participate in February without prior notice of this requirement. Upon reading the form, Gomez-Gonzalez realized that it included Florida Statute 287.135, an anti-Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) policy that affirms the vendor does not participate in any boycott of Israel. Gomez-Gonzalez immediately realized the implications of the clause and rescinded their participation in solidarity with Palestine, the only artist part of the exhibition to do so publicly.

“I am sharing the letter I wrote to them (with some redactions for sharing publicly) because I believe we should all be aware that this can show up on our contracts in order to be paid and exhibited as artists and as cultural practitioners in Florida to work with institutions that receive state funding,” Gomez-Gonzalez wrote in an Instagram post on Nov. 18.

This isn’t the first time South Florida artists have been censored over Palestine. In March, a portrait by Charles Gaines of the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said was temporarily removed without Gaines’ permission from a retrospective of the artist’s work at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami. Just two months later, Miami-based arts nonprofit Oolite Arts took down a Miami Beach window installation by Vũ Hoàng Khánh Nguyên following a phone call complaining of the artwork’s declarative statement of “from the river to the sea” in favor of Palestine.

Meanwhile, public schools and universities are being told to review curriculums for “anti-Israel bias,” and pro-Palestine student groups are being banned. It’s no coincidence that censorship has been heightened in a region where cash flow backs one side of the conflict: Large sums of monetary investment into Israel are reflected across South Florida, including a doubling of Miami Beach’s Israeli bonds to $20 million at the start of the war after Oct. 7, 2023 and Palm Beach County standing as the largest international holder of Israel bond investments at more than $700 million. Pro-Palestinian advocates say they are publicly and fiscally punished for moving in any direction toward Palestinian liberation.

The Florida statute, “Prohibition against contracting with scrutinized companies,” prevents state agencies, departments, and local government entities from contracting with companies for goods or services if the company is either on the “Scrutinized Companies that Boycott Israel List,” created pursuant to Section 215.4725, or engaged in a boycott of Israel.

The Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery, which is financially supported by the city of Pembroke Pines, Broward County, and the state of Florida, is required by state law to include the statute in their agreements. Gomez-Gonzalez’s stance was immediately implicated in a black-or-white response. Artists have two options: Sign the agreement and all the clauses within, or don’t sign and don’t participate in the exhibition. At first, Gomez-Gonzalez said they reached out to the curators to bring attention to the Florida statute as a required field on the vendor registration form.

“To sign a contract that compels me to agree to the Florida Statute 287.135 was not an option, so we coordinated a call,” Gomez-Gonzalez told Prism in an email. “I don’t know if other artists in the show brought up this statute; when I spoke to the curators, they were also surprised and expressed not knowing that it was on the vendor registration form.”

In an email response to Prism’s request for comment, a curator for the Frank Art Gallery said they were not authorized to provide a statement and would forward Prism’s request to the appropriate department. Prism did not receive a response despite a follow-up request.

“No alternatives were provided, thus, my options were to either complete the form with this required field, or not, and not be included in the exhibition,” Gomez-Gonzalez said. “I also don’t know of other artists elsewhere who have brought up encountering this statute in an agreement.”

The statute was first enacted on July 1, 2011, in reference to localized activities with countries such as Sudan and Iran. The Florida State Board of Administration (SBA) maintained a list of scrutinized companies that partook in affairs with these countries. Five years later, the SBA created a “scrutinized companies” list for those boycotting Israel or Israeli-controlled territories. Any company that is found to be aligned with the BDS movement is immediately placed on a 90-day rectification window during which they must clarify their business practices with the state and cease any boycott of Israel. If the company does not comply past that period, the state of Florida ends its investment and absolves any present or future contracts with the business.

Of the corporations that are implicated currently in this list, Unilever Global — a fast-moving multinational consumer goods company — appears consistently as of 2021. The company has since distanced itself from Ben and Jerry’s, which was acquired by Unilever Global in 2000, due to the ice cream company’s public statements in support of Palestine. The distancing allowed Unilever to alleviate the rectification at the state and national level. But, the stakes are higher for local artists who rely on state funding to continue their practice.

Gomez-Gonzalez’s decision to rescind their participation and publicly acknowledge this anti-BDS statute is a first for a South Florida artist. But, it is just one of many instances of these laws appearing across legal-binding contracts, agreements, and registration forms. Across greater Broward County, contracts tied to public art sculpture and utility box projects with the cities of Sunrise and Lauderdale Lakes contain Florida Statute 287.135, along with an agreement between the county and commissioned artworks. In Key West, the statute appears 30 pages into a request for public art for the Frederick Douglass Community Center. These entities did not respond to Prism’s request for comment.

After they went public, Gomez-Gonzalez said folks locally, out of state, and abroad were surprised to hear about the statute appearing as part of an artist contract and supported Gomez-Gonzalez’s rescission.

“Many shared the post, standing in solidarity with Palestine and Lebanon, and raising awareness to the anti-BDS law and the importance of knowing how they are appearing in our contracts,” Gomez-Gonzalez said. “It has opened conversations about fascist policies already in place in the U.S., manifested through censorship and the manipulation of access to adequate funding for our community; about the power that the art community truly has; as well as committing to a stand against the genocide in Gaza.”

Gomez-Gonzalez said they also received feedback suggesting that they “work with the system” or “play the game.”

“I have been asked why not use the opportunity of being part of an exhibition in a cultural institution to talk about it,” Gomez-Gonzalez said. “Here, I question what we consider opportunities, especially as artists and cultural practitioners in the context of an ongoing genocide at the forefront.”

With states across the U.S. passing anti-BDS bills, censorship in the visual arts isn’t limited to taking down artwork or restraining curatorial work tied to Palestinian liberation. Rather, it is happening on a contractual level as exhibitions are organized with state-funded resources. According to advocates and artists, before the pen strikes the paper and signatures serve as legal chains, artists must read the fine print as they appear in these documents and before any terms and conditions are skipped ahead.

“As I wrote in my post, the fact that these statutes exist across the U.S. and appear on vendor registration forms proves the BDS movement works,” Gomez-Gonzalez said. “It proves boycotting is powerful and that power comes from us.”

Prism is an independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color. We report from the ground up and at the intersections of injustice.