San Giacomo: Inside Venice’s Mysterious New Art Island

Approaching the island of San Giacomo by boat, it is easy to believe you are arriving somewhere that has barely changed in a thousand years. The small square island is situated between Murano and Burano, its weathered brick walls consumed by flowers and vegetation, and the remnants of a medieval monastery emerging from the water with eerie stillness. 

A full-scale brick church tilts forwards at a near-impossible angle and greets visitors as they descend their boats onto the island. The mind-bending installation is titled Huff and Puff by artist Hugh Hayden – the first in a series of permanent installations on the island. Behind it, a fluorescent pink tree by Pamela Rosenkranz glows so intensely it seems to outline the whole lagoon itself as it sits by the water‘s edge, drawing butterflies and bees into the greenery. Artist duo Claire Fontaine’s giant blue LED sign declares ‘Patriarchy = CO₂’, and a vast spaceship-like structure by Goshka Macuga rises from the ground. High above, flags and bulbous eyes, part of Matt Copson’s show Fanfare/Lament curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, climb the sky, flown by people on the roof of his exhibition below, accompanied by a brass band scored by Oliver Leith. The works on the island are wildly different in register. Some are monumental and ironic, others more delicate and earnest. Together they seem to be asking the same restless questions about what kind of future we are building.

“I knew [San Giacomo] was a very special place. I still feel the powerful presence … there is almost a living memory of its history” – Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

San Giacomo is the fourth venue of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Art collector and founder Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo bought the island in 2018, finding it completely overgrown. “There were only plants, weeds and brambles,” she recalls. “The vegetation had grown so dense it was impossible to see the buildings. It was just like a forest.” And yet she felt compelled immediately. “I knew it was a very special place. I still feel the powerful presence … there is almost a living memory of its history.” 

The island’s history stretches back nearly a thousand years. In 1046, Doge Orso Partecipazio Badoer granted it for the construction of a monastery and a hospice for pilgrims. Over the centuries it became an orchard, then a vineyard. After Napoleon arrived, its ancient religious architecture was replaced with powder magazines and weapons depots. After military use ceased in 1961, it fell into the long, tangled abandonment that Sandretto Re Rebaudengo would encounter more than half a century later. In a notable interlude in 1975, the Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski used the island for a month during the Venice Theatre Biennale, bringing performers, students and visitors to a site with no water and no electricity. A stand of trees still bears his name.

The pandemic, unexpectedly, clarified Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s thinking. “Covid changed things a little, and from 2020 we started again.” What emerged was a vision of the island in which art and ecology could exist in dialogue. “I understood that there was a powerful presence,” she says, “and so for me it was a way to think that this could again be a place of welcome, of research, of encounters, a laboratory where art and sustainability could grow together, creating a dialogue with the fragility and the beauty of this unique ecosystem.” 

The practical realisation of that vision has been guided throughout by circular economy principles, led by Patrizia’s husband Agostino Re Rebaudengo. His renewable energy company Asja Energy enables the island to be entirely off-grid, producing all its own electricity through a photovoltaic system integrated into the architecture, combined with storage and intelligent energy management. An ancient well, buried more than a 100 metres underground, has been excavated and restored to become the island’s water supply, and the medieval vineyard has been revived. An orchard is being reestablished, growing artichokes and potatoes native to the lagoon region. “San Giacomo functions like a living organism,” Sandretto Re Rebaudengo says, “where art, energy, water, materials, historical memory, the lagoon landscape and architecture are all interdependent parts of a single, sustainable ecosystem.” 

This is also what distinguishes San Giacomo from the Foundation’s other venues. Since 2002, Turin has been the location of its headquarters, currently presenting an exhibition by Diego Marcon. Palazzo Re Rebaudengo in Guarene is set among the Langhe hills in Alba in Northern Italy, where the Fondazione produces its own wine. Venice demands something different. “When you are on the island,” Patrizia says, “the silence, the wind, the water, even the shift in light means you experience art with a deeper kind of attention. It’s a different experience.” Sandretto Re Rebaudengo has also built a private home on the island with interiors designed by Luca Guadagnino, and plans to add new permanent work to the island each year. The lagoon, she is certain, will become an important context to the artworks. “The winter light, the summer sun, the fog, the wind, the high water … There is a violence in such a natural place, but it is a sweet violence.”

The two Napoleonic-era powder magazine buildings are now transformed into exhibition spaces. One of the powder magazines is dimly lit. Entering through thick velvet curtains, the long, narrow exhibition space feels vault-like, its darkness broken only by Matt Copson‘s laser line drawings, markings of creatures and animals inscribed directly into the walls, before being quickly erased. The thin, luminous marks in Fanfare/Lament showcase Copson’s preoccupation with inscription and erasure. The other adjacent exhibition space presents Don‘t Have Hope, Be Hope!, a group exhibition drawn from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection featuring 46 works by 38 artists. The title comes from a painting by Walter Price. “In a time of deep environmental, social, political crisis, it is not enough to wait for change,” Sandretto Re Rebaudengo says, talking about the curatorial concept of the show. “We need to embody it.” The works span more than three decades of collecting, including the first piece she ever acquired: an Anish Kapoor sculpture, purchased after a studio visit in 1992. Amongst the collection are works by Michael Armitage, Sarah Lucas, Maurizio Cattelan, Victor Man and Patricia Dauder.

Access to the island is free, and all spaces have been designed to be fully accessible. The site will open gradually, initially during exhibition openings coinciding with the Venice Biennales and through guided tours bookable by reservation. The Fondazione is currently outlining an agreement with the Municipality of Venice that provides for an on-request stop at San Giacomo on ACTV Line 12, along the Murano–Burano route, with a new waterbus dock currently under construction. 

The Fondazione has now been at work on the island for the better part of a decade. With San Giacomo now fully self-sufficient and artists engaging directly with its landscape and history, Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s intentions are beginning to crystallise. “I really believe that the lagoon changes our sense of time. And this also changes how you look at art,” she says.