Clara
Palazzo Dandolo, Venice. Evening.
The ballroom glowed beneath the soft haze of antique chandeliers. At the entrance, in golden script upon black glass, words shimmered: “For those who were never heard, by C. W.”
I was more nervous than I had ever been. The air hummed with the voices of critics, curators, collectors. They drifted like shadows through the works of young artists from the Balkans, southern Italy, Siberia—each piece whispering of erasure, exile, migration, the silence of abandoned cities.
At the center stood Sophie Brooks’ installation: a vast map laid out from charred wooden fragments, every city’s name scorched into the surface. Cities where museums no longer existed. The audience walked across it unknowingly, their steps crushing memory underfoot.
The Italian pres
