Edith Dekyndt. Song to the Siren

Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi
From 13 to 17 March, from 15 to 22 April 2024

10 am to 7 pm
Free entrance

The installation is also on view during the events at the Teatrino open to the public.

Song to the Siren, 2022, video (colour, sound), 15 min. on loop

In the morning light of an autumn day in 2022, Edith Dekyndt filmed a young woman lying down near the Monument to the Partisan Woman, which sits in the waters of the Venice lagoon along the promenade leading to the Biennale Gardens. She holds a white cloth in her hand with which she wipes, cares for, cleans, repairs, caresses, and consoles the bronze statue depicting this woman from another time who is partially immersed in the lagoon, her hands tied, presumably close to her end, a fate suffered by so many partisan women during WWII, especially in Venice.

In this film presented in the Foyer of the Teatrino at Palazzo Grassi, Edith Dekyndt draws the viewer’s attention to our ability to preserve memories, with some measure of dread over their recurrence. The bronze statue, made in 1969 by the sculptor Augusto Murer, lies on a structure and a support created by Carlo Scarpa that sits in the water.

Song to the Siren forms part of a series of actions in which the same gesture is enacted at several public historical monuments to echo contemporary situations. The titles are always those of songs whose lyrics provide an open, timeless resonance. In this video, the title comes from Song to the Siren (1970) by Larry Beckett and Tim Buckley, which has been recorded by many artists, from This Mortal Coil to Robert Plant.