The Renaissance courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi is flooded, not due to a fault, nor even due to a flood, but by choice. From 14 April to 2 August 2026, the space that has welcomed Florentines and tourists for centuries is transformed into a basin of water: twenty centimeters covering the pavement, with the columns of the portico rising like pillars of a submerged future.
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The work is titled There Are Other Fish In The Sea — There are other fish in the sea — and is signed by Superflex, a Danish artistic collective founded in 1993, recognized internationally for works that bring art, environmental dynamics and economic issues into tension.
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A sea in the Renaissance
The installation is site-specific, developed specifically for the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi as part of the Palazzo Strozzi Future Art program, promoted by the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation and the Hillary Merkus Recordati Foundation, in collaboration with the Kunsthal Spritten in Aalborg, Denmark — which will host the work in a renewed version in 2027. It is curated by Arturo Galansino, General Director of the Foundation.
The body of water is not decorative. It prefigures a future in which the rise in sea levels will irreversibly alter human life, and proposes what its authors define as a project of “interspecies architecture”, that is, a sort of invitation to imagine new ways of coexistence between human and non-human beings, in an ecosystem in which the boundary between land and sea is becoming increasingly blurred.
1966 and tomorrow
The choice of Florence is not random, nor is the moment random, because 2026 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the flood of November 4, 1966, when the Arno overwhelmed the city and its treasures. The courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi, transformed into a basin, then becomes a double reference, to the memory of the water that was a catastrophe, and to the projection of a future water – not exceptional, but structural – which will redesign the geography of coastal cities and beyond.
Useful information
When: from 14 April 2026 to 2 August 2026
Where: Courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi, Florence
Hours: every day from 10:00 to 20:00 – Thursday until 23:00
Tickets: free entry
Official website: palazzostrozzi.org
