After days spent moving through the intensity of Venice Biennale preview week — navigating crowded vaporetto stations, packed national pavilions, endless openings, water taxis, and the constant rhythm of movement that defines Venice during the Biennale — the journey into Umbria felt almost like a withdrawal from the accelerated energy of the global art world itself. Leaving Venice by train toward Florence before continuing by car deep into the Umbrian countryside, the atmosphere gradually shifted from density to stillness. The crowds disappeared. The sound of water traffic gave way to mountain air, silence, trees, and long stretches of landscape.
Known as the “green heart” of Italy, Umbria carries a different rhythm from the country’s major cultural centers. Surrounded by rolling hills, forests, medieval towns, and mountain views, the region is often associated with slowness, contemplation, and a deep relationship between architecture, landscape, and history. Arriving at La Foce, the site of Tyburn Foundation’s residency space in the Niccone Valley, the contrast with Venice became immediately striking. The landscape opened itself quietly: calm mountains, cold air softened by sunlight, distant sounds carried through the trees, and an atmosphere that felt intentionally removed from urgency.
It was within this setting that Tyburn Foundation unveiled Verso il Cielo, a new permanent public commission by Zimbabwean-born, Cape Town-based artist Michele Mathison. Installed within an ancient forest clearing overlooking the Umbrian countryside and the Apennines mountains, the work emerged not as a spectacle competing for attention, but as something discovered gradually through movement, silence, and encounter.
Guests gathered at La Foce during the weekend included artists, curators, writers, collectors, gallerists, journalists, residency participants, and art advisors from across different geographies and institutions. Among those present were Tandazani Dhlakama, Curator of Global Africa at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), writer and curator Liese van der Watt, curator Janine Gaëlle Dieudji, writer Rebecca Proctor, and artists participating in residency programs including Option Dzikamai Nyahunzvi from Civitella Ranieri. Conversations moved fluidly across contemporary African art, institutional futures, artistic production, residencies, architecture, and the shifting geographies of the global art world.
Unlike the often transactional atmosphere surrounding many international art events, the gathering in Umbria felt intimate, intellectual, and deeply human. Discussions continued across long lunches and dinners, while additional visits to institutions including Fondazione Burri and Civitella Ranieri extended the experience beyond the unveiling itself into a broader reflection on art, landscape, and cultural exchange in Italy. What remained particularly striking throughout the weekend was the sense of camaraderie among those present — artists, curators, writers, and cultural workers sharing space not through urgency or performance, but through time, conversation, and attentiveness.
The unveiling itself unfolded through a short uphill walk from La Foce into the surrounding landscape. Lasting only a few minutes, the walk nevertheless transformed the encounter with the installation into something processional and immersive. Gravel shifted beneath footsteps as conversations gradually quieted while guests moved through the trees toward the clearing where Verso il Cielo stood.
The installation immediately revealed itself as both monumental and restrained. Rising from the earth through a series of square travertine columns arranged across the landscape, the work appeared simultaneously architectural, ancient, and meditative. The stone surfaces caught the changing mountain light differently depending on where one stood, while the surrounding trees and open sky continuously reshaped the experience of the work itself. Visitors moved slowly through the installation — photographing, discussing, standing silently, or simply observing how the structure interacted with the landscape around it.
Developed during Mathison’s residency at La Foce, Verso il Cielo reflects the artist’s long-standing engagement with materiality, memory, cultural migration, and the symbolic language embedded within objects and architectural forms. The installation translates a fan-shaped cobblestone motif into vertical travertine forms that rise from the ground toward the sky, grounding the work within the geology and histories of the site while simultaneously opening it toward broader questions around spirituality, landscape, and movement.
For Mathison, who grew up in Zimbabwe where stone carries both architectural and spiritual significance, the work reflects on how cultural forms migrate, transform, and acquire new meanings across geographies. By working with locally sourced Italian travertine, the installation creates a material dialogue between Africa and Italy — between personal memory, ancient histories, colonial legacies, and contemporary artistic language.
At moments, the installation recalled ritual spaces, monuments, archaeological ruins, or spiritual sites shaped through time rather than immediate function. Yet the work resisted fixed interpretation. Instead, it invited contemplation. Standing within the columns, one became increasingly aware not only of the sculpture itself, but of wind, shadow, temperature, distance, silence, and the movement of light across stone surfaces. Nature did not operate as a backdrop to the work; it became inseparable from it.
That relationship between slowness, landscape, and attentiveness also reflected the broader philosophy underpinning Tyburn Foundation. Founded in 2025 by collector and former gallerist Emma Menell, the foundation supports African artists through residencies, commissions, exhibitions, and long-term artistic development. What became evident throughout the weekend was the seriousness with which the foundation approaches care, sustainability, and longevity within artistic practice. Rather than operating through speed or visibility alone, Tyburn Foundation appears invested in creating the conditions necessary for artists to think, develop, and sustain their practices over time.
That approach feels increasingly significant within a contemporary art ecosystem often dominated by production pressure, rapid circulation, and short attention spans. Residencies and long-term commissions such as Verso il Cielo offer artists the possibility of deeper engagement with material, place, and process — something particularly important for many African artists navigating international systems that frequently prioritize visibility over sustained support.
For those gathered in Umbria during Venice Biennale week, the unveiling of Verso il Cielo ultimately became more than the presentation of a public artwork. It became an experience shaped by landscape, dialogue, movement, and reflection. In many ways, some of the most memorable moments surrounding the Biennale happened not within the crowded pavilions of Venice itself, but within the quiet mountains of Umbria, where art unfolded through stillness rather than spectacle.
As the weekend came to a close and guests slowly departed the countryside, the presence of Mathison’s installation lingered in memory — not only as a sculptural intervention within the landscape, but as a reminder of how contemporary art can still create spaces for contemplation, intimacy, and meaningful human encounter. Michele Mathison’s Verso il Cielo does not simply occupy the Umbrian landscape; it enters into conversation with it, allowing visitors to experience architecture, memory, material, and silence as interconnected forms of presence.
