This sculptural installation consists of cubes containing marks made with water in different places and under different conditions. They resemble writing, but they cannot be read. Each is a one-off inscription shaped by a specific encounter between water, material, weather and time. These are not images of water. They are evidence of something water has done.
The cubes rest on small metal bases that almost disappear into the glass surface; inside, rice paper denies us a straightforward view due to its opacity. Instead, the depth of the cube becomes visible: light moves through them, splitting and multiplying the marks suspended inside. From a distance, the installation seems to shift. It might be a wave, a current, a broken skyline or the unstable outline of a city. The eye keeps changing its mind.
Architecture usually begins with control: straight lines, fixed walls, materials ordered to stay in place. Architetture liquide begins with something that refuses to obey. The strict geometry of the cube attempts to contain water’s movement, but it cannot fully discipline what the water has written. What remains is a friction between the solid and the fluid, between the desire to preserve something and the certainty that it will change.
Each cube holds the trace of another place, turning the installation into a fragmented map whose locations cannot be named but have not been erased. Together, they suggest a different kind of architecture – one shaped by movement rather than permanence.
This is not a model for a future city. It is a challenge to the hard, dry certainty with which cities are usually built. What might architecture become if, instead of forcing water into pipes, barriers and boundaries, we began by reading what it leaves behind?
Maria Sky (b. 1997) is a Russian artist who lives and works between Italy and Switzerland. Sky works across installation, sculpture, photography and new media. Originally trained as a cellist before studying sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, she creates works in which technology, natural processes and space itself become active participants rather than passive materials. Her work has entered public collections in Italy and was presented in the Italian Pavillion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Text by Maria Myasnikova