Simone Fattal’s installation "Sempre il mare, uomo libero, amerai!" (Free man, you’ll love the ocean endlessy!, after the poem "L’homme et la mer" by Charles Baudelaire) will inhabit the East wing of the Church of San Lorenzo, including two empty niches of its Baroque altar, with a group of monumental ceramic and glass sculptures created for the occasion. Among them, the figures of Máyya and her lover Ghaylán - a couple celebrated in classic Arab poetry, as well as in folktales and legends, differing from country to country. In the Persian Gulf, their story is that of two owners of a flotilla of vessels engaged in the pearl trade. Mayya’s fleet was more efficient, as her boats were quicker. Ghaylan pondered upon this; one day, after looking closely at a firefly, he had its wings imitated, so that his boats could be moved by the fast speed of winds. He had invented the sails. Will humans still be able to find solutions in the future by learning from nature? Fattal’s installation will also include a series of glass spheres, manufactured in Venice, inscribed with fragments of the vanished “lingua franca”, a mixed language borrowing terms from Italian, Arabic, French, and Spanish once spoken by merchants, pirates, and slaves across all Mediterranean shores.

Simone Fattal was born in Damascus, Syria, and raised in Lebanon, where she studied philosophy at the "Ecole des Lettres" in Beirut. She then moved to Paris, where she continued her philosophical pursuits at the "Sorbonne". In 1969 she returned to Beirut and began working as a visual artist, exhibiting her paintings until the start of the Lebanese Civil War. She left Lebanon in 1980 and settled in California, where she founded the "Post-Apollo Press", a publishing house dedicated to innovative and experimental literary work. In 1988 she enrolled at the "Art Institute of San Francisco", which prompted a return to her artistic practice and a newfound dedication to sculpture and ceramics. Fattal currently lives in Paris.

The artists Petrit Halilaj and Álvaro Urbano share a life together yet typically maintain separate practices. Halilaj’s work is rooted in his biography and his practice embraces an array of media and creates complex worlds that provide space for freedom, desire, intimacy and identity. Urbano utilizes various media to explore notions of space, architecture, and the environment in his practice. His interests frequently intertwine narrative, reality, and fiction. Together, the duo draws on personal and collective histories to create new environments, exploring and negotiating the space between human and the natural world. Both of their practices imbue personal, playful elements which work to ask questions of societal norms. The artists are invited as a duo to develop a site-specific work, premiering at Ocean Space, Venice. The installation echoes the Spanish children’s song 'Ay mi pescadito', where young fish go to school at the bottom of the sea in order to study forms of resistance to humans. The artists will create an ecosystem that comprises a series of large-scale sculptures of hybrid aquatic and terrestrial creatures, which speaks to creating cohesion as well as exploring harmony (or the lack thereof) between different species, or between living organisms and objects. A cast of musicians and performers will activate the installation, at varying duration and intervals, throughout the exhibition period. The installation will occupy half of the historic San Lorenzo Church, reflecting on the unique architecture of the deconsecrated church as well as the city of Venice.

Petrit Halilaj (b. Kosovo) and Álvaro Urbano (b. Spain) are two visual artists based in Berlin. Mostly working individually, their common practice combines specific aspects of each artist’s interests and complements each other’s research. Their joint production reflects on the dichotomy between built environments and nature, and on the possibilities of negotiation between these two realities: in that regard, the inhabitants that occupy these liminal spaces suscitate a particular interest for the two artists. Halilaj and Urbano jointly attended the artist residencies at MAK Residency, Los Angeles (2016-2017) and at Villa Romana, Florence (2014).