Feb 9, 20212 min read

On the Shores of Lake Iseo, A Stunning Giant Installation Is in the Works

Remember Christo’s The Floating Piers, the 2016 installation that allowed people to walk on the waters of Italy’s Lake Iseo? It was quite a sensation, and now, a new installation that will allow visitors to walk on the lake’s waters again has been announced for 2022.

It’s called ‘Your World’ and will feature two enormous hands emerging from the water and supporting the Earth. The artist behind this project is Lorenzo Quinn, known for his gigantic sculpted hands and his works of art in defence of the environment.

Your World is scheduled to be installed in Sulzano on the eastern shore of Lake Iseo (province of Brescia in Lombardy) during 2022. The installation, which will include a walkway as for The Floating Piers, is meant to symbolize the power of humankind to either save or destroy the planet.

You may be familiar with some of Quinn’s works already. The giant hands that emerged from the waters of Venice’s Grand Canal, an installation known as ‘Support’ (2017), became iconic. They appeared as if they sustained an ancient palace, the Ca’ Sagredo hotel, from falling into the water, and were meant to symbolize the threat of climate change, particularly serious for a city like Venice, which, some scientists predict, will be underwater by 2100 due to the rise of sea levels caused by higher temperatures.

Monumental hands emerge from Venice's Grand Canal to highlight the effects of climate change

A follow-up to that installation was ‘Building Bridges’ (2019), an installation consisting of six pairs of 15-meter-high hands forming an arched bridge over a waterway at the Arsenale former shipyard in Venice’s Castello district. In this case, the hands were meant to symbolize the need to build bridges rather than barriers.

Building Bridges Exhibit by Lorenzo Quinn

Quinn himself announced his new project through a video rendering of what Your World will look like on his Instagram account. All five continents appear green and completely covered with forests. The contemporary artist, who was born in Rome, is the son of actor Anthony Quinn.