Marcello Martinez-Vega: Amazonien

With “AMAZONIEN”, artist Marcello Martínez Vega transforms the Renaissance church of Santa Maria della Visitazione into a multi-sensory space. The installation approaches water not as a resource, but as a living principle — origin, memory and a force connecting humanity, nature and culture.

At its core lies an urgent awareness of the Amazon as one of Earth’s most vital and fragile ecosystems. Since its encounter with the Western world in the 16th century, it has existed in tension between exploitation and preservation. Today, it stands as both a threatened environment and a site of resistance, protection and global responsibility.

The installation weaves together visual imagery, sculptural elements, sound and ritual performance into an immersive environment. Suspended woven pirogues evoke absence and displacement, while organic structures created in collaboration with Indigenous communities form a symbolic architecture of resilience and balance. Natural pigments, elemental forms and archetypal figures such as the jaguar, the turtle and the pyramid express a worldview in which nature, cosmos and humanity are inseparably connected.

“AMAZONIEN” renders water perceptible through its absence: where water disappears, silence becomes visible.

The church becomes a space of encounter between Western and Indigenous cosmologies, between spirituality and ecology, and between art and responsibility. Aesthetic experience unfolds as a quiet call to recognise shared interdependence.

Developed over four years in collaboration with artists, artisans and communities from South America and Europe, “AMAZONIEN” is both an artistic statement and a gesture of care. It is not an exhibition about nature, but a position — a reminder that responsibility is a form of love.