Maria Cristina Crespo, a Wunderkammer for the Present
Maria Cristina Crespo, Isadora Duncan Vase | Courtesy Maria Cristina Crespo
A cabinet of curiosities where Dante meets Pasolini, the cult of Mithras coexists with One Thousand and One Nights, and the Mediterranean enters into dialogue with India, Mexico and the deserts of Asia. This is the universe of Infinito Cabinet. Maria Cristina Crespo, a Collateral Event of the 2026 Venice Art Biennale, on view from 9 May to 22 November at Riva San Biasio and curated by Giusy Caroppo. Conceived as a contemporary Wunderkammer, the exhibition brings together mixed-media works that move across literature, art, myth, religion and philosophy. Anthropomorphic vases, miniature stages, painted backdrops, bizarre figures and costumes made from recycled fabrics create a kind of history of the world in miniature, where high culture and popular traditions coexist without hierarchy. Yet this accumulation makes no attempt to impose order. Instead, Crespo focuses on the contaminations, survivals and contradictions of Western culture, countering cancellation and simplification with the possibility of dialogue. Memory becomes something to question and recombine rather than a static heritage to be preserved. Venice provides a natural setting for this cabinet without borders. A city shaped over centuries by encounters between East and West, it becomes part of an exhibition that approaches culture as a continuous process of stratification: an archive in which the past never stops changing.