Garatelier

/Cecilia Maran

Mare e Laguna di Venezia

Cecilia Maran · Padua 2022

«Mejo no ’ndarghe», i dixe

Venice is a most particular city, one that owes its existence to a fragile relationship with the unpredictable nature of the water around it.

«Mejo no ’ndarghe», i dixe: the lagoon basin in warm colours, mapping the pollution of the water
Year
Padua 2022
Technique
Etching, marbling, sugar-lift and direct biting with nitric acid and citrosodina
Plates
Zinc plates cut through
Format
Framed print, 700 × 1000 mm
Paper
Magnani Pescia 310 g
Edition
1/3

/The work

The salt marshes, the mudflats and the sea beds of the lagoon are home to forms of life so particular that they astonish anyone who ventures among them. Delicate environments, and no less threatened for that by human action, which through the pollution of the water risks causing all of it to waste away, disappear and, in the end, sink.

The water of the Venetian lagoon basin appears to us in that blue-green colour, ready to take the setting sun and throw back its characteristic glints of light; the work rebuilds that place instead in warm, unexpected colours — colours that serve to map it, bringing out the levels of pollution in its waters.

The lagoon shows itself in all its morphological beauty and poetry, accompanied nonetheless by the danger and the ever-present threat of the human being who is sometimes the first to confirm how much it is Mejo no ’ndarghe (better not to go there).

/Close up

The mark, close up

The cut edge, the point where the metal opened, the colours overlaying one another.

«Mejo no ’ndarghe», i dixe: detail of the bite on the paper
Detail
«Mejo no ’ndarghe», i dixe: second detail, the overlaid colours
Detail
Credits
Artist and printer: Cecilia Maran
Photographs
The artist’s archive