There is a deep connection between the sea and the journey: a tension toward the unknown that runs through myths, poetry, and real lives. From the voyages of Odysseus to the explorations of Ambrogio Fogar, and through the visions of Caspar David Friedrich, Bas Jan Ader, and David Horvitz, the sea has always embodied the experience of the sublime: a threshold between desire, discovery, and transformation.
On these very waves was born “I haven’t known the silence of the stars and of the sea”, a project weaving together art, research, and material. Curated by Giorgio Cellini alongside Daniele Coppola, Andrea Croce, and Marco Strappato, under the anthropological direction of Elena Scovazzi, the project explores navigation and the marine imagination as metaphors for both inner and collective journeys.
From the Sea to Denim: the collaboration with Tonello
During the research residency promoted by the Associazione Promotori Musei del Mare at the Musei del Mare di Genova, the artists delved into archives, collections, and memories tied to the city and its relationship with the sea.
From this research emerged a series of works created on denim panels, where the fabric becomes a surface for storytelling and reflection.
To give visual form to these works, Tonello contributed to the project by executing laser markings on denim panels inside its Research & Development Lab in Sarcedo (VI).
The markings were created using THE Laser 2.0, Tonello’s most advanced precision-laser machine, engineered for highly accurate textile processing while respecting the environment and minimizing energy consumption.
In this way, technology turned into a poetic instrument, able to translate signs, routes, and horizons into luminous, delicate textures, as if the sea itself had left its trace on the fabric’s weave.
The artists and their artworks
- Giorgio Cellini, drawing from his family’s seafaring stories, builds a narrative that merges personal and collective memory, evoking the ocean crossing as a rite of passage.
- Daniele Coppola, artist and sailor, creates sculptures inspired by celestial and atmospheric phenomena.
- Andrea Croce explores the language of fashion and maritime styling through a site-specific intervention reflecting on the visual identity of seafarers.
- Marco Strappato interprets the sea as a performative horizon, investigating its representation in contemporary art.
Alongside their works, drawings by Maestro Emanuele Luzzati, from the series La Vecchia Genova, portray the post-war city, revealing the enduring bond between sea and community.
A title, a poetic tension
The project title takes inspiration from a verse by Edgar Lee Masters, “I haven’t known the silence of the stars and of the sea”, reinterpreted by Giorgio Cellini as a celebration of absence, not as emptiness, but as a space of possibility.
It is within this absence that movement, inquiry, and creation arise: the same energy that drives the artist, the explorer, and anyone who dares to cross their own boundaries.
The project is part of “I Miei Musei Sono I Negozi” (“My Museums Are the Shops”), an itinerant exhibition program conceived by Giorgio Cellini that brings art into unconventional spaces – among them the Storica Bottega Lucarda in Genoa, active for over a century in producing and selling clothing for dockworkers and sailors.
Here, art meets everyday life, and denim becomes a witness to a shared journey, between sea, memory and the future.
