Collateral Event of the 61st International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia
INFINITO CABINET. MARIA CRISTINA CRESPO
Curated by Giusy Caroppo and organized by Eclettica Cultura dell’Arte
“Infinito Cabinet. Maria Cristina Crespo”, curated by Giusy Caroppo and organized by Eclettica Cultura dell’Arte, is a Collateral Event of the 61st International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. The exhibition-installation, open to the public from May 9 to November 22, 2026, at Riva San Biasio-Castello 2145, takes the form of a contemporary Wunderkammer, somewhere between André Malraux’s imaginary museum and Jorge Luis Borges’s unfathomable cosmic library. Composed of multi-material works, it anchors the complex research of the artist Maria Cristina Crespo within the theme of Biennale Arte 2026, “In Minor Keys” by Koyo Kouoh, offering a reflection on Western culture through a journey through Literature, Art, Myth, Religion, Philosophy, and Places of Belonging.
“Infinito Cabinet. Maria Cristina Crespo” presents an iconographic theater in which genres and times interact: the cult of Mithras, popular arts, the East, the West, Africa, Asia, the Americas, Central Europe, and the Mediterranean; Ovid, Dante, Novalis, Pasolini, Artaud, and The Thousand and One Nights come to life alongside myths, saints, heroes, medieval Rome, Orthodox Europe, textile India, Baroque Mexico, Asian deserts, and real or symbolic places.
A micro-narration of history takes shape in anthropomorphic vases and stages, among pictorial backdrops, bizarre figures, and grotesque-style recycled fabric dresses. Works with literary titles become instruments of knowledge and wonder, entering the debate on Cancel Culture, to which Crespo counters a non-ideological and “countercurrent” cultural debate, addressed by the artist from the late 1970s to the present, a time of crisis for Western identity, asserting the complexity of Western identity as a resource.
And Venice, a city of contamination, becomes an emblematic place: a landscape of the Memory of the World, overlooking the Grand Canal, between finite and infinite.
The Collateral Event INFINITO CABINET. MARIA CRISTINA CRESPO is organized by the Eclettica Cultura dell’Arte Association (Barletta-BT), chaired by Stefano Faccini. Cultural partners: Società Dante Alighieri (Rome), Fondazione Orestiadi (Gibellina - TP), Fondazione Scuola di Arti e Mestieri “F. Bertazzoni” (Suzzara - MN), and Associazione Poggio dei Massi Erratici (Rome). Scientific Committee: Mauro Carrera, Art Critic; Carlo Marcello Conti, Visual Poet; Paolo Gori, Collector; Macrina Marilena Maffei, Anthropologist of Feminine Magic; Maria Paola Orlandini, Director; Francesco Schiavulli, Artist and Performer; Maria Strova, Teatro del Respiro; Bianca Tosatti, Art Brüt Historian. Organization and communication support: “CS Art Management” by Carlotta Scarpa. Architectural layout by architects Monica Petrungaro and Aldo Testolin. Corporate image by Ivan Losapio. Main Sponsor: Onyx & Cie SA (Geneva - CH).
INFO:
Collateral Event of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
Title: Infinito Cabinet. Maria Cristina Crespo
Exhibition venue: Riva San Biasio, Castello 2145, 30122 Venice
Exhibitor: Maria Cristina Crespo
Curator: Giusy Caroppo
Organizer: Eclettica Cultura dell’Arte
Open to the public: May 9 - November 22, 2026
ECLETTICA Cultura dell’Arte
e-mail: infinitocabinet@ecletticaweb.it
website: www.ecletticaweb.it www.cristinacrespo.it www.circuitodelcontemporaneo.it
Press:
Laura Cometa
e-mail: press@lauracometa.com tel. +39 327 1778443
Organization and communication in Venice
CS Art Management
press@csartmanagement.com
www.csartmanagement.com
