Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale that Society Has the Capacity to Destroy: Mare Nostrum is a group exhibition at the 2019 Venice Biennale presented by The Brooklyn Rail, a New York City-based, independent arts publication. Inspired by Lauren Bon’s text-based neon work on view in the courtyard—from which it borrows its title—this exhibition, together with its accompanying public programming 1001 Stories for Survival, addresses the environmental crisis in the age of climate change, with a focus on the Mediterranean Sea.
The show brings together 73 artists of different generations and cultural backgrounds whose selected works, in a wide range of media, invite critical awareness on the fragility of nature and human life while poetically invoking the regeneration of living systems. Julian Charrière, among many others, meditates on themes such as ephemerality, transformation, and interconnectedness.