The Living Rhythms of Venice: Melissa McGill on Water, Community and Transformation

The Venetian lagoon and community are essential players in shaping the city’s aura, movement, memory, and survival. Alongside the 61st Venice Art Biennale, American artist Melissa McGill presented Marea (30 April - 10 May), a public installation in the residential alley of Corte Nova, and Aquae (30 April - 20 June) at the nearby 10 & zero uno gallery, offering a meditation on Venice as a living city shaped by water, community, and continual transformation.

Marea di Melissa McGill, installation view. Photo by Marta Mancuso

 

Venice: A Site of Memories and Inspirations

Amidst the geopolitical debates and radical artistic gestures surrounding the 61st La Biennale di Venezia, McGill’s latest projects, Marea and Aquae, emerged from sustained engagement with Venice’s waterways, communities, material culture, and rhythms of everyday life. Installed between the Arsenale and Giardini, Marea transformed Corte Nova’s iconic laundry lines into a participatory installation of painted bed sheets animated by wind and movement. Nearby at 10 & zero uno gallery, Aquae explores water as subject, pigment, and collaborator through lagoon watercolours, cartographic interventions, and ecological abstraction.

Venice holds a special place in McGill’s heart. First arriving in Venice at 22 after graduating from Rhode Island School of Design, she has continued returning over the past three decades. “This city of water has such unique sensory characteristics — its sounds, light, and reflections profoundly shaped my life and artistic practice.” she recalls. “Whilst Marea celebrates Venetian presence and vitality during a moment of intense global focus, Aquae further explores these themes by using water from the lagoon as a creative collaborator, inviting the water’s own expression into the work,” she explains.

 

Melissa McGill, Marea. Photo by Marta Mancuso

 

Water as Subject, Material and Collaborator

The two projects activate water onshore, and reveal how deeply water inhabits McGill’s artistic process. A “water storyteller,” she engages water as an active natural force embodying movement, permeability, unpredictability, and change. “I often use water and natural materials sitespecifically, inviting water’s own creative expression into my work,” she notes. “Engaging with water as a collaborator is central to my practice. We are all bodies of water, orienting ourselves in relation to the water around us. As a life force, I trust its wisdom and am always curious about where my longtime collaborator, the Venetian Lagoon, will lead me.”

Across the works on view in Aquae, the Lagoon Watercolor Studies series allows water to function not simply as subject matter, but as material, process, and collaborator. The Venetian water physically enters the pigments and paintings themselves. “In these works, water is not simply depicted, but participates in the construction of the image,” McGill points out. “It becomes an active medium through which to record the motion of wind, the rhythm of waves, the sedimentation of time, and the atmospheric vibration of the landscape.”

 

DELTA II, 2024. Water, organic indigo, chlorophyllin, copper oxide, homemade soy milk, kaolin clay, and vinegar on found printed map mounted on linen 97.79×69.85cm. 10 & zero uno, Venice. Photo by Filippo Molena

 

Rather than portraying water from a distance, her works, through immersion and responsiveness, allows environmental conditions and material behaviour to shape the final works.

 

Cultural Heritage

McGill’s engagement with water naturally extends into the communities and traditions shaped by it. In projects like Marea (2026), Quei de la Corte Nova (2025), and Red Regatta (2019), she draws on everyday Venetian practices such as laundry hanging and vela al terzo sailing. “My projects celebrate community collaboration and sustainable traditions existing in harmony with the Venetian environment,” she says. “These are ‘listening projects’ where shared stories inspire the work.”

 

RED REGAT TA (COPPA DEL PRESIDENTE DELLA REPUBBLICA , BACINO SAN MARCO), 2019. Archival pigment print, pigment and matte gel medium, 106.7x160cm. 10 & zero uno, Venice. Photo by Filippo Molena

 

She recalls how longtime Corte Nova residents described the alley as a former extension of domestic and communal life. “Maria and Patrizia, amongst others, told me what a vibrant shared space it used to be,” the artist says. “Today, they feel increasingly uneasy being photographed by tourists, a shift that has fundamentally altered the neighbourhood’s social fabric.” She continues, “As they pointed to the windows of neighbours long gone, it was as if they could still see that lost community in reminiscence.”

Her projects foreground domestic continuity, communal visibility, and everyday resilience within a city increasingly shaped by tourism and displacement. McGill is currently documenting these conversations for an upcoming book and film project intended to amplify local voices often excluded from global narratives surrounding mass tourism and climate change.

 

Corte Nova, Castello. Photo provided by the artist

 

A Future in Transformation

For McGill, the Venetian waters and communities inspiring her work are confronting an increasingly uncertain ecological future. She declares, “Marea is here to celebrate the resilience of this community despite these intense global pressures.” Indeed, the artist has spent years exploring the emotional and ecological dimensions of water through collaboration and public engagement.

 

Melissa McGill, Marea. Photo by Marta Mancuso

Visitors at Marea. Photo by Marta Mancusoph

 

Whilst the future is not ours to see, Venice emerges through McGill’s works as a living community whose waterways, memories, and traditions continue to shape new possibilities for collective resilience. “My work is rooted in amplifying local voices and inspiring collective action,” she says. “By placing local culture and civic participation at the centre of environmental and social renewal, I hope to inspire meaningful change that is heart-led.”

 

Text by ALISON LO, FRSA