RONALD VENTURA
LUNA

At the upcoming 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Filipino artist Ronald Ventura — a powerhouse of Southeast Asian contemporary art — will unveil “Luna,” a major Collateral Event staged within the industrial echoes of the Docks Cantieri Cucchini. Curated by Ruel Caasi, the exhibition presents a suite of over a dozen newly realized works that meditate on the fluid, often precarious relationship between two water-bound worlds: Malabon and Venice.

Under the overarching theme of the Biennale Arte 2026, “In Minor Keys,” curated by the late Koyo Kouoh, Ventura’s “Luna” functions as a site-specific intervention that explores cross-cultural sedimentation. Using the moon as both a mythological anchor and a literal conductor of tides, the artist bridges the ecological vulnerabilities of his native fishing village in the Philippines with the historic canals of Venice. Water here is portrayed as an ambiguous force — simultaneously a source of life and a harbinger of destruction — linking these geographically distant realities through shared rhythms of memory and trade.

On view is a pastiche of divergent visual languages. The exhibition seamlessly weaves together oil paintings, charcoal drawings, and complex sculptural compositions in resin and Murano glass. In a signature Ventura move, photorealistic precision dissolves into Renaissance grandeur, while contemporary cartoons intersect with the textual debris of classical references. This immersive environment challenges the limiting concepts of the nation-state, instead focusing on the “complex tangles of identity” within a globalized archipelago.

Promoted by MUSE Science Museum Trento and Castel Belasi – Contemporary Art Center for Eco Thought, the project transcends the gallery through a public program tied to the “We Are the Flood” platform. By addressing extractivism and rising sea levels, “Luna” serves as a potent aesthetic response to the Anthropocene, reminding us that we are ultimately bound by the celestial and aquatic forces that govern our shared condition.