LO SPETTRO DELL’ACQUA
Annalisa Mercuri
MUMU MULINO MULTIMEDIALE – MULINO NOVO, VIA MADONNA, 27, ERBè – VERONA
SETTEMBRE 2025
curated by: federica viola
in collaboration with the Accademia Cignaroli e Scuola Brenzoni di Pittura e Scultura. The exhibition was supported by Erbè Town Hall, Isola della Scala Town Hall and sustained by the 57ª Fiera del Riso, Ente Fiera Isola della Scala, AIAMS – Associazione Italiana Amici dei Mulini Storici, Cooperativa Ca’ Magre agricoltura biologica, and Antiche Contrade associations.
What happens when we glimpse the Specter of Water? In this exhibition, Annalisa Mercuri explores the fragile threshold between presence and dissolution – where water, in its ever-changing states, becomes a metaphor for time, memory, transformation, and life, suggesting pathways that are both possible and urgently necessary.
At the heart of the exhibition lies The World Weather Diary, a project launched on April 22, 2024 – Earth Day – as an invitation to reflect on our shared responsibility toward the planet. One hundred and sixty people across forty-three countries received from the artist a kit to create cyanotypes, including origami instructions to fold an ice cube and photosensitive postcards on which to place it, to be exposed to sunlight during the autumn equinox. Each participant was asked to record environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, light) and, spontaneously, found themselves adding personal thoughts as well. The postcard was then sent back to the artist by traditional mail, completing a cycle that intertwines digital and analog, presence and absence, gesture and contemplation.
Today, 121 postcards from 33 countries bear witness not only to climate conditions but also to fragments of life, intimacy, and global interconnectedness, forming a choral work – a poetic map in shades of Prussian blue. During the equinox – a moment of balance between light and shadow – we are called to pause, to take stock, to let go, and to prepare for renewal, recognizing value even in emptiness. Each cyanotype is the trace of a gesture, of waiting, of a relationship with matter – dimensions often overlooked in the digital age. It preserves the past without fixing it rigidly; rather, it interprets it. It does not assign value to objective data but becomes a metaphor for the fragile, selective, and poetic nature of human memory. At a time when climate change disrupts and alters natural cycles, Mercuri proposes a secular and sensitive ritual through which to re-synchronize with the rhythms of the Earth. The postcard – an interface between public and private, and a physical memory of a moment – is marked by a postage stamp, a symbol of authenticity and travel that renders its message, anticipation, and relationship. The message is in fact deferred: the writing must be interpreted, desire enters the scene, and binds itself to waiting.
This global reflection intertwines with a local investigation rooted in the artist’s native territory. Mercuri gathers water impressions from the Adige River, the Adriatic Sea, Lake Garda, and the Tartaro River. These latter impressions in particular, together with traces of the surrounding landscape and ecosystem – created on Narushima Washi, a traditional Japanese handmade paper composed of plant fibers, a living medium capable of receiving and preserving natural memory – were documented by Mercuri on the occasion of the inauguration of the Mulino Novo di Erbè, celebrating the rebirth of a space returned, through great commitment and foresight, to the community and to beauty.
Through this exhibition, Annalisa Mercuri tells us how urgent it is in our contemporary condition to rediscover slowness, care, and connection. Her artistic practice is at once solitary and collective – a meditation on time that becomes a poetic gesture, an invitation to listen once again to the world that surrounds us, to which we belong, and which we are.
Federica Viola
