May 20, 2023 — November 26, 2023
Giulio De Mitri, Laura Mega, Diego Repetto, and Oliver Ressler
The Waters We Are In
Curators
Lanfranco Aceti and Alessandro Melis
Location
Armenian Culture Studies and Documentation Center, Venice
Photography
Lanfranco Aceti
The Waters We Are In is an exhibition conceived and developed by Lanfranco Aceti and co-curated with Alessandro Melis. It is part of a larger international project titled What If This Were the Case? on the four Empedoclean elements: Air, Earth, Fire, and Water. The exhibition showcases at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale the works of art of four international artists: Giulio De Mitri, Laura Mega, Diego Repetto, and Oliver Ressler.
The exhibition analyzes the intrinsic relationship between water, art, and architecture as part of the Collateral Events approved by Leslie Lokko, curator of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023. The Waters We Are In problematizes the contemporary cultural understanding of water which is part of processes of capitalistic exploitation, abuse, and appropriation under the guise of efficiency, modernization, and gentrification. The artists engage with water as a source of life and inspiration, but also as a force that is taking on new meanings as it is reshaped by human pollution and in return alters millenarian societal paradigms.
Documentation of Exhibition
Oliver Ressler, Excerpt from After the Barrage, The Deluge
Artists
Over forty years of active presence in the visual arts characterize the artistic research of Giulio De Mitri. He gives his work an ever-new value, full of stimuli and meanings: a cosmogonic repertoire drenched in mythical and sacred visions. He is a rigorous artist and a refined intellectual with multiple cultural interests. Over the course of his long and challenging artistic journey, De Mitri’s works have been rooted in deep ethical and aesthetic reflections.
Laura Mega works between Rome and New York. She is the creator and curator of the ‘DREAMERS’ art project and co-founder of the ‘LAZZARO_art doesn’t sleep’ project. Her practice combines drawing, text, embroidery, wool yarn, and printing. In addition, she sometimes uses other materials (such as pink epilating wax) on old trousseaus: sets of clothes, linens, and other accessories that a bride would bring with her to the new house.
Diego Repetto (architect, artist and landscape critic) promotes the concepts of Land Lighting and Quinto Landscape. He is a member of the Italy Section of the International Association of Art Critics, of the Ideal Space Working Group and of the International Landscape Research Laboratory of the University of Perugia. In 2021 he was on the advisory board of the Italian Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale and international speaker at the Whenzou Polytechnic.
Oliver Ressler is an artist and filmmaker who produces installations, projects in public space, and films on issues such as economics, democracy, migration, the climate crisis, forms of resistance and social alternatives. Ressler has had 90 solo exhibitions, including at Berkeley Art Museum, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade; Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, Egypt; The Cube Project Space, Taipei; and many others.