SECRET POWER Simon Denny at the Marco Polo Airport

Simon Denny is the first Biennale artist to
use the terminal at Marco Polo Airport, designed by architect Gian Paolo Mar.
Here, people converge from all over the world. For most visitors, it is their
first point of contact with Venice. Extending through the arrivals lounge,
Denny’s installation will operate between national borders, mixing the
languages of commercial display, contemporary airport interior design, and historical
representations of the value of knowledge.  The Airport terminal—a busy hub for millions of travellers—incorporates restricted spaces, surveillance spaces, and interrogation spaces, and is equipped with high-tech security systems. Denny has ‘dragged-and-dropped’ two actual-size photographic reproductions of the Library’s decorated interior across the floor and walls of the arrivals lounge, traversing the border between Schengen and non-Schengen space. The installation incorporates plaques that reproduce examples of early maps from the Library’s collection, which could be mistaken for advertisements for what’s currently on show there.