THETIS, 2026

On the occasion of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Andrea Crespi presents Thetis, a site-specific holographic installation within As Above, So Below, a Collateral Event promoted by One Ocean Foundation and ZEITGEIST19 at the former Church of Santi Cosma e Damiano on Giudecca Island, now home to Fabbrica H3.

Crespi continues his research into the relationship between classicism, technology, and perception through a site-specific work suspended between biology, myth, and ancestral memory.

Inspired by the mythological figure of Thetis, the primordial sea nymph, the work takes shape as a holographic jellyfish suspended within the sacred space of the church, entering into dialogue with the historic frescoes and transforming the environment into a perceptual dimension poised between the visible and the invisible.

Thetis explores the sea not as a landscape, but as a living archive and a reservoir of deep memory. The jellyfish thus becomes a metaphor for a liquid and ancestral intelligence, symbolizing the interconnection between ecosystem, technology, and the human dimension.

Through the language of light and digital immateriality, Crespi develops a reflection on the relationship between nature and the artificial, translating the invisible into a sensory experience.

Curated by Elizabeth Zhivkova and Farah Piriye Coene, As Above, So Below brings together international artists, researchers, and interdisciplinary collectives invited to engage with the ocean as a living system, a space of interdependence, and a repository of collective memory.

The project is recognized as a Collateral Event of the 61st Biennale di Venezia and is part of the UNESCO Blue Thread initiative.