Venice: The Active Side of Infinity

The Active Side of Infinity is finitude. The city that once seemed eternal is gradually sinking beneath the waves. We live as if we had all the time in the world, but the clocks above the facades are ticking.

The focal point of the painting is an expensive designer bag that I saw in a shop window in San Marco, featuring an image of a migrant child by Banksy (painted by the artist on the wall of a Venetian house), but wearing a plague mask from a local shop. This symbol of the Middle Ages, superimposed on a modern tragedy, turns the child into a messenger. We have turned someone elses pain into a stylish print on expensive leather, putting on masks of indifference, protecting ourselves from reality, not wanting to feel its weight. While some become collectors of expensive accessories, others are forced to survive; while some drown in the flood of tourism, consumption, and visual noise, others simply “drown.”

The flip side of infinity is the awareness of finitude. And it is this knowledge that urges us not to photograph life endlessly, but to freeze in the moment and truly live it while the city and we ourselves still exist. To live here and now, reaching for the sky, turning every moment into an act of perfection before it becomes part of the silent depths.