Italian fashion label Marni is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a Venice art installation against the backdrop of the city’s 56th Art Biennale.
The brand is hosting a series of events to celebrate its major milestone. The project, which is tilted, Becoming Marni, will occupy the spaces of San Gregorio Abbey in Venice from May 9 to November 22.
Under the supervision of Carolina Castiglioni, creative director of Marni’s special projects, and curated by Stefano Rabolli Pansera – architect and founder of curatorial agency Beyond Entropy Ltd – Becoming Marni is a site-specific installation. The project is also a collaboration with Brazilian self-taught artist Véio who has created 100 wooden sculptures for the occasion. The sculptures will be distributed around the cloister and inside the rooms of the San Gregorio Abbey, usually closed to the public.
Véio, represented exclusively by Galerie Estação, lives and works in Nossa Senhora da Gloria, a small village in the north East of Brazil, where he creates his enigmatic sculptures by giving new life to pieces of wood, clogs and branches he finds along the river, immediately identifying a being in each piece.
A brand spokesperson said of the collaboration: “Marni and Véio share in fact approach and language. They both explore the power of transformation and strive for the presence of pure form. The title Becoming Marni is the result of a dialogue between opposites of people and places, that are linked by the same aesthetic. Thus Becoming Marni finds an ideal spot within the mapping of all the world’s futures which is the theme of the 56th Venice Art Biennale: it draws an ideal world, hence a scenario that might belong to the future.”
Marni was founded in 1994 by Consuelo Castiglioni, who remains as the label’s designer.