I guess in the end what's important for me is that experiences then get shared. Suspended in the enigmas of Viola's interiors, I am experiencing the transformation of Venice's cultural landscape into the artist's space of light and darkness. As in earlier installations Viola does not distinguish between his creative interiors and the physicality of the outer landscape. The piece set an emotional ground for my reception of Viola's Buried Secrets in Italy.
Grace is an invisible meeting of two distant perceptions.
The sense of duration, Viola's most distinctive signature, allows my process of gradual absorption of the Biennale's installation. On my right and left, above eye-level, I encounter ten white faces, alternatively men and women, human size, their eyes closed and gently vibrating as in a state of REM sleep, their mouths gagged like prisoners kidnapped by unknown forces, beyond their human control. These electronic busts projected from the ceiling demand my attention as they articulate, in deep voices, a mysterious speech from unreachable sources. I listen to the anxious chorus of these prisoners in the darkness. I strain my senses to grasp their messages and become part of their babelic conversation.