PENUMBRA

Berggruen Arts & Culture and Monteverde Productions present _PENUMBRA_, an exhibition by Kelsey Lu opening July 8 at Palazzo Diedo. The work continues the live performance staged at the palazzo on May 7, 2026, transforming its traces — soil, sound, and charcoal — into a lasting installation developed in dialogue with photographer Yumna Al-Arashi. _PENUMBRA_ was conceived across three realms: - Earth: black sand, gravity, imprint, friction, decay, ancestry - Dream: improvisation, fractured memory, subconscious movement, lucidity - Heaven/Collapse: music as devotional prayer, rupture, contemplation, surrender Imagery from Lu's collaboration with Al-Arashi shaped the visual language of the May 7 performance, exploring the sacredness of land, the violence of erasure, and the tenderness of survival. Visiting Venice, Al-Arashi found striking parallels between the city's frescoed buildings and Lu's own creative evolution through her album _So Help Me God_ — a shared sense of layered, evolving storytelling. The installation draws on this connection: the heavens trickle down the walls of Palazzo Diedo, the fresco acting as both curtain and ceiling, concealment and decoration. The charcoal drawings on view are made from soil crushed and spread across the floor during the May performance, echoing Venice's own hidden strata — earth, water, marble, light — and Lu's earlier experiments making clay from soil gathered in North Carolina. Across the installation, the body appears as vessel, archive, and site of power, moving through the witness, the devotee, the warrior, the lover, the ghost. _PENUMBRA_ holds these states together, where identity remains fluid and wholeness is only ever hinted at.