Venice Pavilion

HOME SEXTANT

Commissioner: Maurizio Carlin
Curator: Giovanna Zabotti
Exhibitors: Safet Zec, Pietro Ruffo, Vittorio Marella, Franco Arminio
Venue: Venice Pavilion at Giardini

We are in need
of a place: it calls for
a hand,
a house, a smile,
something we can make into a perimeter.
—F. Arminio

The Venice Pavilion aims to be an exploration of a condition not geographical, not of language, not social but affective, of a search for self and its emotional and sentimental completeness. Being at home is undoubtedly a feeling, but often, in the common imagination, uniquely linked to one or several places where you feel free to be yourself. The project tackles this dynamic in an intimate way by choosing the languages of poetry and painting in which visitors can immerse themselves: as in real life, every detail has its own reason. Entering the exhibition space means penetrating the roots of one’s own nature, to seek an awareness of what cannot represent “home” because it is distant and foreign.
Home Sextant is, therefore, a tool for research through history and our own self, nature and love, amongst the works of Pietro Ruffo, Safet Zec, Vittorio Marella, the young artists of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, with a particular observatory thanks to the Artefici del Nostro Tempo (Creators of Our Time), up-and-coming artists selected through a competition, and the work of Koen Vanmechelen located outside.