Water Dream Memory: Water as Living Matter at Palazzo Zorzi, Venice
Giulio Malinverni, The Parable of the Blind, 2024, Oil and gold leaf on iron-grey marble, 20 × 30 cm
In the premises of the UNESCO Office in Venice, Palazzo Zorzi hosts Water Dream Memory, an exhibition curated by Eriberto Eulisse and presented in conjunction with the 61st Venice Biennale. The project starts from an essential question: how can artistic language address the global water crisis without falling into catastrophist rhetoric? Sara Bonaventura and Lukas Taido, the two artists selected by the Global Network of Water Museums (WAMU+NET) as part of the S+T+ARTS Aqua Motion programme, respond with an approach that privileges sensory perception and emotional depth. Their works transform scientific data into dense imagery that makes water felt as a force that is simultaneously vibrant and vulnerable - present, absent or merely remembered. The exhibition creates what the curators call immersive "zones of attention": spaces in which to slow down, listen, and be traversed by the experience of water understood not as a neutral resource but as living matter shaped by time and care. The project reconnects audiences with water as a shared heritage and collective responsibility, recovering a philosophical dimension often forgotten in the urgency of environmental news.