Murano Illumina Il Mondo 2026

The Venice Glass Week's parallel project Murano Illumina il Mondo transforms St. Mark’s Square into an open-air exhibition space, where glass enters into dialogue with the city’s art and architecture. Beneath the arches of the Procuratie Vecchie, 12 light installations offer visitors an innovative interpretation of one of Venice’s most iconic artistic forms: the chandelier.
For this year's 4th edition, artist Cerith Wyn Evans collaborated with NEON line (Musestre) and Idea Murano (Murano) on 
G=A=R=L=A=N=D (Garland...a Vessel): an original early XIX century Rezzonico chandelier “a barchetta” (boat-like shaped) hand-blown in Murano, where 14 glowing neon Kanji are applied as a floating garland. They evoke images of stars, currents, tides and waves, a clear connection with Venice and the unique shape of their glass "host".

"Language as a garland and an (airborne) virus colonising the flowery barque of the host. Redolent of the aerial putti in Watteau’s ‘Embarkation to Cythera’, they flutter - poised in air - composed of Kryptons pale glow and frail transparency. Elision*, a form a vitrified icon for iris and a glimpse of cornea…A retinal bouquet thrown for square roots to catch. A synthesizer predicated on rhythm/analysis (whereupon repetition and difference ‘duet’ through reflection) and the phase shifts of waves, particles and beams are reconfigured somehow here and now, here and there and nowhere. Think as if words on wings…a lyric."
(* Elision: meaning both the omission of a sound or syllable in speech and the process of joining and merging)

“Deep in the night plying very strange cargo
Our soul-ships pass by, solo trips to the stars in the sky.
Gliding so far that the eye cannot follow…where do they go?
We’ll never know.”'
(Beauty Queen - Roxy Music)