iOcean Space (Chiesa di San Lorenzo)Castello
Tide of Returns
This exhibition has ended.
The Repatriates Collective fills the church with a sand dune of shell figures, ghost nets, video and sound on repatriation, Indigenous knowledge and the ocean.
Museum websiteMore in Venice
The floor of a Venetian church is covered in reddish sand from Anindilyakwa Country, with thousands of small figures of shell, grasses and textile spread across it. The show's text describes them as gathering "like a landscape of bodies and ancestral presence". The installation includes Warnindilyakwa shell dolls, once fertility symbols and teaching tools. Manchester Museum returned 174 items to the community in 2023.
The Repatriates Collective's From My Mother's Country fills the west wing, with video and sound. In the east wing, Verena Melgarejo Weinandt hangs blue textiles threaded with black braids and shows a three-channel video of women washing braids in a river. A research room alongside looks at legal recognition of the Venice Lagoon as a living entity. Reviewer Rebecca Canavesi argues that decolonising museums takes more than restitution.
Entry is free with no booking. Ocean Space is open Wednesday to Sunday, 11:00 to 18:00, and the show closes on Sunday 11 October.
Editor's pick
The Repatriates Collective fills the church with a sand dune of shell figures, ghost nets, video and sound on repatriation and Indigenous knowledge of the ocean. Free.
Look for
The sand and shell figures
Thousands of small figures of shell, grasses and textile stand on reddish sand from Anindilyakwa Country, spread across the church floor.
The Dadikwakwa-kwa shell dolls
Warnindilyakwa dolls, part of the 174 items Manchester Museum returned in 2023, appear alongside a video on what they mean to women in the community.
Washing the braids
A three-channel video shows women washing fabric braids in a river, filmed on the Danube in Austria.
The blue textiles in the east wing
Blue fabrics threaded with black braids hang inside the church, which the show's text likens to river currents.
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- Cheap Culture
- Nerding Out
- Rainy Days
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Image credits
8
- Ocean Space (Chiesa di San Lorenzo)Didier Descouens / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Amoako BoafoCourtesy of Museo di Palazzo Grimani
- Cosmotechnics: Ding Yi as a Planetary Code© Ding Yi. Courtesy Lisson Gallery and ShanghART Gallery
- Nigel Cooke: Bad Habits© Nigel Cooke, courtesy Pace Gallery
- Museo di Palazzo GrimaniSailko / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Fondazione Querini StampaliaDidier Descouens / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace)Didier Descouens / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museo Storico NavaleGiovanni Dall'Orto / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5 IT