Sonia Levy: We marry you, O sea, as a sign of true and perpetual dominion
22 August – 16 November 2025

We marry you, O sea, as a sign of true and perpetual dominion is an immersive audio-visual artwork by Sonia Levy that engages with Venice and its Lagoon from below, focusing on their submerged, life-giving, and altered ecologies to complicate the Italian city’s dominant narratives of expansion and top-down hydro-defence strategies. Attuned to the Lagoon’s ebbs and flows, Levy adopts submerged perspectives that sense the interplay between land and water, life and decay, reflecting on the historical forces that have shaped this environment.  

The title references the Venetian medieval Marriage to the Sea ritual, in which the Doge, patriarch of the Republic, asserted dominion over the Mediterranean by wedding the Lagoon—an invocation that invites reflection on Venice's enduring pursuit of mastery over the watery. 

This work was commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary through TBA21-Academy in Venice with the support of the S+t+ARTS initiative of the European Commission and the European Marine Board ‘EMBracing the Ocean’ program.