Giulia Piscitelli's ex-votos and nautical charts at Venice Naval Museum

Giulia Piscitelli (Naples, 1965) presents over 45 works at the Museo Storico Navale (MUNAV) in Venice, curated by Stefano Chiodi. The exhibition, titled 'Chiave Terrestre' (Earthly Key), weaves together water and land, commerce and war, faith and technology, using the museum's historic collection as a palimpsest. Piscitelli's interventions include gold-leaf halos on historical nautical charts, 'Pitture mute' (silent paintings) that turn small canvases into reflective surfaces by removing paint, and 'Una Nuvola Come Tappeto' (2019), thirteen prayer stools covered with Islamic prayer rugs. 'Planeta' (2018) transforms a kevlar bulletproof vest into a liturgical vestment. The artist describes her practice as inserting works into preexisting narratives, treating the museum as a stratified organism. The show runs at MUNAV, which was originally founded to preserve models of Serenissima ships and now opens to contemporary projects. Piscitelli's works pose questions about salvation and shipwreck, intimacy and conflict, reflecting on water as humanity's next frontier.