History of Night and Destiny of Comets (Storia della Notte e Destino delle Comete ) is the title of the exhibition project of the Italian Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia (23 April - 27 November 2022), promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity - Ministry of Culture. Curated by Eugenio Viola, the exhibition presents the work of a single artist for the first time in the history of the Italian Pavilion: Gian Maria Tosatti. The curator chose a project that would act as a powerful statement of contemporaneity, capable of restoring a bold reading of the present and giving Italy a unique voice.
History of Night and Destiny of Comets is conceived as a vast environmental site-specific installation that occupies the whole space of the Tese delle Vergini. It proposes a vision of the current state of humanity and its future prospects. The work is conceived as an intermediary device that contains and mixes a variety of languages, as usual in Tosatti's research, which integrates literary references and visual art, with stimuli from theatre, music, and performance. A complex, experiential narrative machine that leads the visitor along a sensitive, sometimes familiar and sometimes unsettling path, with the aim of creating a new awareness and concrete reflections on the possible destiny of human civilisation, which fluctuates between the dreams and errors of the past and the promises of a future that has yet to be written in part.
