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Forme di vita

Forme di vita
A one-week workshop in the Venetian Lagoon
05 – 10 September 2022


Guest curator: Edoardo Lazzari, in collaboration with Cosimo Ferrigolo

Guest artist: Delphine Wibaux

With: AtlantÌdee, Lorenzo Barbasetti di Prun, Barena Bianca (Fabio Cavallari and Pietro Consolandi), Marcantonio Brandolini d’Adda (Laguna~B), Chiara Famengo, Cosimo Ferrigolo (MetaForte), Jane da Mosto (We are here Venice), Marco Paladini, Giacomo-Maria Salerno, Theresa Maria Schlichtherle (Extragarbo), Delphine Wibaux

Participants: Max Beets, Pieter Eliëns, Kristina Fekete, Rafaela Figurski Vieira, Nina Gross, Malena Guerrieri, Paul Müller, Oona Oikkonen, Laurence Petrone, Pit Riewer, Maren Rommerskirchen, Alexandra Samarova, Maria Sawizki, Rune Tuerlinckx, Witold Vandenbroeck, Charlène Wartelle-Sentenero (alumni and students from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp).

→ The detailed programme can be found here


‘Forme di vita is an archipelago of subaquatic and anti-authorial Lagoon voices, a programme of meetings, activities and talks written with an unknown – or rather ignored – Venice.
Edoardo Lazzari

In the continuity of our monthly seminars in 2021-22 and in resonance with the Luxembourg Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, from which the idea for this research project originated, we wanted to organise a workshop in Venice, taking the city and the Lagoon as a field study for encounters, reflections, and artistic experimentation.

At various levels, this unique territory crystallises a multitude of questions pertaining to our relationship with the world, whether we think of the singularity of the Lagoon ecosystem and the threats posed to it by climate change and human activity, or the pioneering role that Venice has played in the emergence of globalisation and the problems linked to international tourism with which it is confronted today. The cultural importance that the city has had historically and its current status as a hub for international art also offer us a rich context in which to question the role that art can play in our changing world.

The workshop’s programme, developed in close collaboration with Edoardo Lazzari, an independent curator and researcher based in Venice, will lead us through different islands and municipalities of the Lagoon (in Venice, Cavallino-Treporti, Lio Piccolo, Torcello, Murano and Sant’Erasmo) to meet people who, through their activities and engagements, maintain a strong link with Venice, but also ‘other-than-humans’ (plants, animals and aquatic, natural, cultivated or urban environments) that make up the richness, diversity and uniqueness of the Lagoon.

Over the course of the week, we will also be accompanied by an invited artist, Delphine Wibaux, who had already been entrusted to develop a day-long workshop in Antwerp in April 2022. For our Venetian week, she has conceived of a series of ‘impromptus’: periods of individual and collective practice that will punctuate the programme of in situ meetings and visits.

In Venice, we will also visit different exhibitions that particularly resonate with our research subject: the Biennale itself, but also the solo exhibitions of Dineo Seshee Bopape, Diana Policarpo and Tue Greenfort, and the group exhibitions Penumbra and Planet B: Climate Change and the New Sublime, among others.

Over the course of one week observations, encounters, visits, exchanges and periods of practice will intertwine. They will nourish our collective imagination and shared reflections to develop the next steps of our research project together.

Christophe Gallois and Tina Gillen


Forms of Life is developed by Tina Gillen (artist and teacher at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp) and Christophe Gallois (curator, Mudam Luxembourg), and promoted by Guy Bovyn (Head of the Fine Arts programmes, Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp). It is organised by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp in collaboration with Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, in the context of the Luxembourg Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale.


(Image - detail: We are here Venice / Eleonora Sovrani, 2022)