Ugo Schiavi takes us into the marine depths with The Midnight Zone. Between abyssal sounds, translucent creatures, and bioluminescent light, the artist composes an immersive installation. A sensory dive into an unknown and threatened world.
It is in the Grande Halle of the former slaughterhouses in Nice, at the heart of 109, that artist Ugo Schiavi unfolds The Midnight Zone, a sensory installation that is as mysterious as it is fascinating. Conceived as a journey into the ocean depths, this work is an integral part of the Biennale of Art and the Ocean, The Sea Around Us, organized in response to the 3rd United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC 2025) that the City of Nice is hosting this year.
From the first steps, the visitor is drawn into the darkness. The floor, covered with sand and gravel, crunches underfoot, evoking the ocean floor. The darkness is complete, yet inhabited: deep and high-pitched sounds emerge from all around, enveloping the body and mind. These sounds were designed in collaboration with a bioacoustician specializing in the soundscapes of the abyss, blending digital vibrations and organic tones. The effect is immediate: one plunges into an unknown world, far below the surface, several thousand meters deep.
A ballet of hybrid creatures
In this darkness reigns a strange menagerie, both real and fantastical. Translucent sculptures, suspended in space, slowly appear. They seem to float, silently evolving, in a choreography of lights and projections on tulle, like fragments of a mutating ecosystem. These forms, inspired by abyssal creatures, were crafted from blown glass, a precise work realized in Marseille at CIRVA (International Center for Research on Glass and Visual Arts), based on 3D-printed models, reworked by hand, then transformed into molds for blowing.
Their structure reveals a complex network of cables and recovered materials, blending organic and technological elements. These “mutants seem to be the offspring of a world where nature would have had to reinvent itself to survive the overpresence of humans,” says Ugo Schiavi. The light they emit, reminiscent of the bioluminescence inherent to deep-sea species, is the only source of illumination in this artificial night.
A total work
Ugo Schiavi does not perceive this exhibition as a mere display: “The place itself is a work,” he asserts. Each element, from the floor to the sculptures, from sound to light, contributes to this immersive creation. The experience becomes physical, almost meditative: as the eyes adjust to the darkness, the visitor gradually discerns their surroundings. It is more a crossing than a visit, a passage into a parallel world, between mythology and ecological speculation.
The abysses, the ultimate virgin territory, fascinate as much as they worry. And it is precisely this paradox that Schiavi highlights: “while humanity knows the Moon better than the ocean depths, the latter are already threatened by human activity.”
An artist at the crossroads of worlds
Born in 1987 in Paris, Ugo Schiavi lives and works in Marseille. A graduate of Villa Arson in 2011, and a winner of the Bernar Venet prize, he has developed a body of work centered on the hybridization of technology, history, and fiction. His projects have taken him from the Biennale de Lyon to the Noor Riyadh Festival, from the Bienalsur to Manifesta 15 in Barcelona. In 2024, he was also chosen to create the sculpture Euphoria as part of the Paris Olympic Games.
With The Midnight Zone, he offers a striking installation, both poetic and political. A world that is slow, silent, profound, where the mystery of origins and the shadow of impending catastrophe converge.
