The Journey’s Concept. 10/10/2025
European Cultural Centre, Palazzo Mora – Venice, Italy 2026
In 2025, the concept for THE RIVER began to take shape — an architectural vision for an exhibition that moves like the work itself: from motion into stillness, from presence into memory.
What follows are reflections on the installation, gathered into a single flow of ideas rather than divided by technique.
The Performance – THE RIVER
It begins quietly, folded in the foyer of Palazzo Mora.
Accompanied by music, the dancer draws THE RIVER slowly into the inner courtyard.
The audience gathers along the edges — at the windows, in the arcades, above and around — witnessing the movement from every side.
When the performance comes to rest, the fabric of THE RIVER is folded again, placed upon the sculpture.
The column becomes a tree — the bearer of the rescue shirts, their sleeves hanging down like branches.
A transformation of form and meaning: from flowing to rooted, from motion to memory.
The Sculpture – “THE RIVER That Has Become the Pillar of the Earth”
This work is dedicated to the moments when the universe seems to stop,
when the stream of life hesitates,
when breath is lost and time itself freezes.
The river becomes the pillar of the earth.
It is a stark image of the human inability to learn from experience.
Layer by layer, the rescue shirts are placed over a pre-constructed column, forming a tree-like sculpture.
The sleeves hang down like branches — a fragile forest of memory.
This act recalls the darkest images of human cruelty, awakening associations with the great catastrophes of European history.
At the same time, it becomes a monument — a quiet, necessar y sign of remembrance and reflection.
A second, shorter performance may accompany this act, lasting around fifteen minutes.
Afterward, the sculpture will remain, silent and present, throughout the entire exhibition.
The Photograph – THE RIVER in the Landscape
In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, THE RIVER was placed within the landscape — flowing, moving, alive.
A photograph taken there will be part of the exhibition, installed in visual dialogue with the sculpture and the documentation of the performance.
Together they form a constellation:
the frozen universe,
the sculpture,
and the movement — the captured moment of life within stillness.
The Drawings – A Mosaic of Destruction
When I created the drawings for this chapter, I felt like a chronicler of violence.
Each image shows a moment that has become a symbol of destruction:
a burning house,
a helping hand that itself is destroyed,
a burning bed — the loss of safety —
and the human bodies consumed by flame.
These small drawings form a mosaic of pain and memory — fragments of violence that together tell a larger story.
They speak of destructive forces, coming from many directions, seemingly unconnected, yet sharing the same end: annihilation.
I do not wish to show these works in a linear order.
They will be scattered through the space, as fragments of truth — places to stumble, to pause, to look again.
Their small size is deliberate.
Intimate, almost quiet, they act as silent cries that make the surrounding room louder.
Their childlike simplicity, set against blue-toned, dreamlike backgrounds, stands in sharp contrast to the horror they depict.
It is this tension that gives them weight — and meaning.
Disconnected fragments, yet bound by one clear message:
These images are a mirror of our time.
The question of how we act, what we transform,
and what remains.
Freedom is – to shape the circumstances.