Ai Weiwei, La Commedia Umana, 2020 | Photo: © Francesco Allegretto

The Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore hosts, alongside some of the most famous and recent works in wood and porcelain by Ai Weiwei, a new selection of glass sculptures by the Chinese artist born from an experiment started in Beijing in 2009 and culminated in a triennial project conceived in Murano in collaboration with the Abbazia di San Giorgio Maggiore - Benedicti Claustra Onlus, Berengo Studio and Fondazione Berengo. The exhibition revolves around a monumental suspended sculpture, made up of over 2000 pieces of black glass handcrafted by the masters of Berengo Studio in Murano, entitled La Commedia Umana - Memento Mori. With a width of over six meters and a height of almost nine meters, the enormous installation is the largest suspended sculpture in Murano glass ever made, and reveals, thanks to the skilful study of light developed by the Luce5 team to enhance its details, a cascade of bones, organs and unexpected objects that are made through a poignant reflection on the alienating relationship between man and the natural world, a message that resonates even more strongly in the fragile ecosystem of the Venetian lagoon.

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