Artist duo Petrit Halilaj and Álvaro Urbano have unveiled a new work that takes aim at the anti-LGBTQ+ stance of the Italian right-wing government.
The roomLunar Set for Uprising Seas, features 30 large-scale aluminum sculptures of fantastical hybrid creatures that stand beneath an egg-shaped moon. Each sculpture doubles as a musical instrument that can be played ad hoc, creating both harmonious and discordant sounds.
The work – a joint commission between TBA21-Academy and Audemars Piguet Contemporary – is exhibited in the desecrated church of San Lorenzo in Venice. TBA21-Academy, the ecological offshoot of the contemporary art foundation TBA21 (Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary), has transformed the church into a dedicated place called Ocean Space.
Kosovo-born Halilaj said the installation is about “queer futures” and “plural solidarity”. Halilaj and Urbano are a couple professionally and personally, but generally work individually. “As a couple coming here, and also [in relation to] Italy politically it was important to bring an egg made by two boys. There is room for everyone in society.
An exhibition project statement adds:[The egg sculpture] evokes the possibilities of future alternative forms of life, transformation and parenthood to be reimagined in order to break the notion of fixed or stable “natural” identities which, in human societies, lead to systemic discrimination of queer individuals and families.
Last month, Italy’s far-right government led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy party, ordered Milan’s city council to stop registering children of same-sex parents. Meloni, who was elected last September, said in a speech last June: “Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology, yes to the culture of life, not to the abyss of death.”
The duo’s sculpture-instruments will be taken through the streets for a monthly procession, culminating in performances in the church led by a troupe of musicians. “We love that they become a parade in the city,” says Halilaj. The artists supervise the performances disguised as seagulls. Audrey Teichmann, curator at Audemars Piguet Contemporary, a branch of Swiss watchmakers, helped design and organize the installation.
The TBA-21 Academy also presents in another part of the church new works by the Parisian artist Simone Fattal. The two exhibitions, supervised by independent curator Barbara Casavecchia, share the title So the waves come in pairs, a line in a poem by Fattal’s late partner, Lebanese artist and poet Etel Adnan. The poem “reminds us that we need to think and rethink plurally and practice forms of unity,” Casavecchia said in a statement.
So the waves come in pairsOcean Space, Venice, until November 5
