Ugo Schiavi. The Midnight Zone

MAMAC next door

Grande Halle, Le 109: Contemporary Culture Centre
Wednesday to Saturday, 11.00am to 6.00pm, Free admission

89 route de Turin, 06300 Nice / le109@nice.fr / 04 89 98 25 73

As part of the Biennale of Arts and the Ocean, “The Sea Around Us”, artist Ugo Schiavi is coming to the Grande Halle of the former slaughterhouses of Nice with an immersive installation on the world of the abyss, produced specially for the exhibition.

The title of the installation, The Midnight Zone**, refers to the deep waters where sunlight cannot penetrate.
This hybrid environment consists of glass sculptures sometimes aggregated with recycled, natural or industrial elements. The strange creatures interact with computer-generated videos and sounds generated in collaboration with a bio-acoustician.

The Midnight Zone connects current ecological and technological issues***. The disturbing atmosphere created summons up contemporary concepts of the deep sea, ancestral mythology and science fiction. The transformation of a world that’s still so little known but already threatened generates fascination, anxiety and fantasy.

An international artist, Ugo Schiavi took part in the Voyage à Nantes in 2021, Biennale de Lyon in 2022, Noor Riyadh Festival in 2023 as well as Manifesta 15 in Barcelona in 2024. For the Paris Olympic Games in 2024, he was commissioned to create the sculpture Euphoria for the Athletes’ Village.

**Another name given to the bathypelagic zone, a layer of the water column found between 1000 and 4000 m.

*** Mining industries want to exploit the abyssal plains to extract metals such as nickel, copper and manganese. This extraction would have irreversible consequences for entire ecosystems which are as yet untouched.

Exhibition co-produced by MAMAC, Le 109: Contemporary Culture Centre, and La Station, in conjunction with the Nice 2025 Year of the Sea and the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC).
With the support of C4 + bermont&fils.
The glass items were designed and produced at the International Centre for Research on Glass and Plastic Arts (CIRVA) in Marseille.

*Rachel Carson, The Sea around Us, Domaine Sauvage, Editions Wildproject, 2019 Original edition The sea around us, 1951 – Courtesy of Wildproject and the Rachel Carson Estate.