Melissa McGill. Marea

Taking place in the heart of Venice in Corte Nova from April 30 - May 10, 2026, Marea is conceived in close partnership between McGill and local Venetian residents and students, creating a community-focused model of artistic resilience at a time of great challenges for Venice.

Today, the Venice-based Associzione Water Projects, the non-profit cultural association founded by U.S. artist Melissa McGill, announced Marea — a new public participatory art intervention to coincide with the 61st International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Conceived by McGill, the artist behind the renowned public art project Red Regatta that swept Venice in 2019, Marea is officially endorsed by the Italian National Commission for UNESCO and the Italian Ambassador to the United States, Ambassador Mariangela Zappia. Marea has received official support from Venice's Municipality.
Continuing the artist's highly collaborative and community-engaged creative practice, Marea will be realized together with local Venetian students and residents, including project manager Marcella Ferrari and Venetian and cultural heritage advocate Massimilliano Smerghetto.

From April 30 - May 10, 2026, a sea of approximately 100 new paintings will fill the existing laundry lines that, for generations, have crossed Corte Nova in Sestiere di Castello — a rare authentic Venetian calle. One of the most photographed and picturesque streets in the city, Corte Nova has maintained its residential identity and neighborhood connectivity despite the devastating impacts of overtourism and climate change. Filling the length of the street, the paintings recall the waves of the Venetian Lagoon and the lives and traditions of the residents who inhabit this street, a powerful metaphor for our interconnection with water. At a moment when Venice occupies the full attention of the global art world, Marea will offer a timely, evocative, and uplifting message of unwavering Venetian vitality, spirit, and resiliency in the form of transformative creative action.

"Since the very first time I came to Venice in 1991, Corte Nova moved me. Its laundry lines suspended between homes form a web that reflects the people who live there, full of stories, rhythms, and memories," explains Melissa McGill. "Over the years I have personally witnessed the profound changes happening in Venice, as it loses aspects of its most authentic identity, yet the sight of laundry hanging out to dry has always given me hope: it is a sign of life and resiliency. I began to think about ways that I could use my work as an artist to activate, celebrate, and demonstrate the vitality of Venetian community, and also inspire more global conversation around the challenges confronting not only Venice but cities around the world."

Marea is endorsed by the Italian National Commission for UNESCO for "the cultural value of the initiative." It has also received the support and praise of the Italian Ambassador to the United States of America, Mariangela Zappia, who commented: "With Marea, Melissa McGill addresses in a poetic and participatory ways crucial issues, such as the impact of climate change and mass tourism on Venice's tangible and intangible heritage, proposing a public art intervention rooted in collaboration with local communities. It is a project that, through Venice and its calling for dialogue, explores urban resilience and the relationship between culture, environment, and collective identity. Marea is poetry and beauty; it is commitment and community."

To realize Marea, McGill is working with the residents of Corte Nova and students from the esteemed local art and design school Università luav di Venezia to create the approximately 100 paintings that will suffuse the street. Using hues of distinctive greens and blues, captured through McGill's color studies of the Venetian Lagoon, watery brushstrokes will be painted on different sizes of bedsheets, representing the lives of the residents and honoring Venetian vibrancy. The paintings will fill Corte Nova to create an immersive watery environment, one collectively alive, "breathing" in the breeze, and evoking the fragile future of the city.
Its name the Italian word for "tide", Marea confronts the fact that Venice is being flooded — with waters due to climate change and with people due to mass tourism. Taken together, these forces have had disastrous consequences for generations of Venetians, local traditions, and the physical city itself. In a city where tourists now drastically outnumber residents, Corte Nova is one of the last remaining streets in all of Venice to retain its historical, residential identity, epitomized through its iconic laundry lines. For McGill, Venice represents a second home — she lived there from 1991 to 1993, a formative time in her creative development, and has returned every year since. As a visual artist and "water storyteller", she has long drawn profound inspiration from the City of Water and her close Venetian collaborators; inextricable partners in a shared, creative practice of exploration of the emotional and ecological dimensions of water and community. Marea marks the next chapter in this story—deepening relationships with Venetian communities and institutions McGill has worked with for years, and expanding the conversation globally.
Located in the Castello district between the Biennale Gardens and the Arsenale, Marea is positioned to draw the attention of both local residents and global visitors to La Biennale di Venezia. Throughout the ten-day-long installation, McGill and the local residents and arts students will be present in Corte Nova to engage people in dialogue about the project — a celebration and testament to art's power to build social cohesion, deepen climate action, and drive conversations about cultural heritage preservation and resilience. Special events for Marea will feature a collaboration with students from the Andrea Barbarigo Institute.
Marea's impact will also extend beyond its immediate presentation in Venice. McGill is producing a 30 minute film and a publication to document the creative processes behind the project to celebrate people and perspectives of all those that contribute to the realization of Marea into its historical record. By amplifying its core message of creative community resistance, the film and publication will draw powerful connections between Venice's local challenges and broader global concerns around climate change, cultural loss, and urban resilience. These materials will preserve, share, and dramatically increase visibility of local voices too often left out of mainstream narratives that animate both the art world and the global conversations around the climate crisis.... read the rest of the article»