Sacred Landscapes is a group exhibition curated by Marco Delogu in the woods of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, on view from 18 May to 26 November 2023.

 

In 2018, the Fondazione Giorgio Cini promoted the creation of the Vatican Chapels: the first Pavilion of the Holy See at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. Ten chapels created by ten international architects – Andrew Berman, Francesco Cellini, Javier Corvalan, Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores, Norman Foster, Teronobu Fujimori, Sean Godsell, Carla Juacaba, Smiljan Radic and Eduardo Souto de Moura – are housed in a space of approximately one and a half hectares. Built as temporary installations, they later became permanent architectural structures that may still be visited to this day. In this place in the lagoon, suspended amid water, sky and earth, an ideal dimension for hosting art, reflection and spiritual experience, through the works of ten artists, the exhibition Sacred Landscapes invites us to reflect on the sacredness of the place and the role of man as creator and guardian.

 

The works of Don McCullin, Tim Davis, Marco Delogu, Graciela Iturbide, Martin Parr, Annie Ratti, Guy Tillim, Paolo Ventura, Vanessa Winship and Francesca Woodman are placed on the ground in the vicinity of the ten chapels and interact with them, although they are also thereby exposed to the elements and the passing of time, and thus subject to possible alteration and degradation.

 

The photographic works portray natural elements that become part of the landscape through the spiritual activity of man and the gaze of those who enter the Fondazione Giorgio Cini’s woodland, in this slow process that endows the research with meaning and value.