Fragments of Fire Worship
Presented by Fondazione Bvlgari as a Collateral Event of the Biennale Arte 2026
Biblioteca Marciana, Venice
6 May – 22 November 2026

Fondazione Bvlgari promotes its first exhibition as Collateral Events of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Hosted in the Sale Monumentali of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, a venue that symbolizes the preservation and transmission of knowledge, the project combines two site-specific installations: Momentary Monument – The Library by Lara Favaretto and Fragments of Fire Worship by Monia Ben Hamouda. With its presence in Venice, and through the support for two artists that are representative of the most recent generations of Italian art, Fondazione Bvlgari reaffirms its cultural vocation and articulates its eclectic approach rooted in the cross-pollination between cultures, creative languages, innovation and aesthetic exploration.

The exhibition opens with Fragments of Fire Worship by Monia Ben Hamouda, an installation consisting in two neon sculptures installed in the Vestibolo. The fragmented and indecipherable luminous signs evoke a form of writing that has relinquished its communicative function to become a gesture, a trace, a scar. The artist, the daughter of an Islamic calligrapher, transforms her cultural heritage into an impossible alphabet in which light withholds instead of illuminating. Neon lights conjure fire, seen as an ambivalent force that both reveals and destroys, introducing a vision of knowledge as unstable matter, subject to continuous metamorphosis. Through an exercise in formal disobedience, the work challenges the idea of language as a univocal vehicle for the transmission of knowledge.

Photo by T-space