Andrea Crespi turns Thetis into a luminous ocean presence at the Venice Biennale
Thetis by Andrea Crespi in Venice presents a site-specific holographic artwork inside Fabbrica H3, the former Church of Santi Cosma e Damiano on Giudecca, during the 61st Venice Biennale. On view from 9 May to 8 June 2026, the work places a luminous jellyfish among the frescoes of the historic church, using digital art to connect marine life, mythology, and environmental consciousness.
Created as an homage to Thetis, the mythological sea nymph associated with the depths of the ocean, the artwork transforms the jellyfish into a suspended organism of light. Crespi does not approach the marine creature as an image of decoration or spectacle. Its body appears fragile, fluid, and almost untouchable, hovering between biological form and digital apparition. Through this presence, Thetis suggests the ocean as a hidden field of memory, where the origins of life and the future of the planet remain closely linked.
The holographic installation continues Andrea Crespi’s research into archetypes, classical references, and contemporary technologies. After Artificial Beauty, his first major institutional exhibition at Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan, the artist brings his language into a more symbolic and atmospheric dimension. In Thetis, the digital image becomes a body without weight, a marine figure that seems to emerge from another time while remaining entirely contemporary in its material language.
Inside the former church, the work gains a strong architectural tension. The frescoed walls, the sacred history of the building, and the immaterial surface of the hologram create a dialogue between permanence and disappearance. Crespi uses this contrast to move the jellyfish beyond natural representation. The creature becomes an archetype of survival, a sign of evolutionary memory, and a reminder of the delicate systems that continue to sustain life beneath the visible surface of the sea.
Thetis is presented within As Above, So Below, a collateral event promoted by One Ocean Foundation and ZEITGEIST19 and curated by Elizabeth Zhivkova and Farah Piriye Coene. Although the exhibition brings together international artists and collectives working across installation, sound, artificial intelligence, and immersive environments, Andrea Crespi’s contribution remains focused and intimate. His holographic jellyfish turns ecological awareness into a perceptual encounter, asking the viewer to consider the ocean not as a distant landscape, but as a living intelligence.
Crespi’s collaboration with One Ocean Foundation follows an ongoing path that includes Blockchain for the Ocean, the foundation’s first crypto initiative dedicated to marine ecosystem protection. With Thetis, technology becomes a way to give form to what is usually unseen: deep water, biological fragility, and the invisible relations that connect human life to marine ecosystems.
All images courtesy of Andrea Crespi
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