For a sentinel on the shore, it’s like the sea isn’t there. His gaze seems to wipe out the landscape. Whoever looks at the sea for watching purposes is looking for only one thing: a threat, the danger of being attacked, the approach of the enemy. A sentinel’s gaze is like a veil that covers the landscape: against the real sea backdrop his assumptions, his moods, anxiety, need to check and send a warning, always seem to prevail.

If the horizon stays calm, nothing has happened for the sentinel. But actually “the sea has happened“, as the sentinel has never stopped looking at it intensely, without realizing it. So, Lucia Veronesi’s gaze captures what happens when we believe we are looking at something and we see something else. Well, that something does not stop happening, quite the contrary, it happens even more intensely, hidden as it is by our assumptions.

The fabrics used by Lucia Veronesi, superimposed and sewn together, symbolically and physically veil the sight of the sea. They superimpose on the sight of the sea with another sight made of the inner landscapes, desires and narrative devices of the observer.

Each of us is a sentinel, and to all of us “the sea has happened”: that sea we cannot see even if we have it before us, because we are too busy looking for something else.