candy chandeliers slowly dissolve through venetian palazzo in exploration of fragile joy

"Inside the historic interiors of Palazzo Contarini Polignac in Venice, Simone Post transforms nostalgia into something tactile, fragile, and almost impossible to hold onto. For Still Joy - From Ukraine into the World, presented by the PinchukArtCentre as an official collateral event of the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, the artist presents She Knew She/It/They Would Melt, a site-specific installation that addresses themes of domestic memory, childhood fantasy, and emotional survival."

"Occupying the ornate rooms of the Venetian palazzo, the installation reconstructs chandeliers, decorative objects, and intimate family portraits entirely out of candy. Lollipops become framed memories. Sweets hang like precious antiques. Familiar interiors soften into a dreamlike hallucination, somewhere between a faded recollection and a fictional refuge. Through this exaggerated sweetness, Post creates a temporary architecture of care, where vulnerability is fully materialized."

"Post's installation feels less like escapism and more like an insistence on tenderness amid instability. Candy, in Post's hands, becomes an unstable emotional material, carrying the carefree pleasure of childhood while simultaneously foregrounding impermanence, fragility, and eventual collapse. The chandeliers may glitter, but they are destined to melt. The installation acknowledges joy as something delicate that we must continuously protect, rebuild, and imagine into existence."

"This tension resonates deeply within Still Joy - From Ukraine into the World, whose exhibition narrative unfolds through testimonies gathered by Ukrainian marine, veteran, and former prisoner of war Hlib Stryzhko. Across the show, artists explore joy as a radical human capacity that persists alongside them. Within this context, Dutch artist's candy interiors operate like emotio"

Simone Post creates a site-specific installation inside Palazzo Contarini Polignac in Venice. The work, She Knew She/It/They Would Melt, reconstructs chandeliers, decorative objects, and family portraits entirely from candy. Lollipops function as framed memories, while sweets hang like precious antiques. The familiar interior becomes a dreamlike hallucination between recollection and fictional refuge. Candy is treated as an unstable emotional material that carries childhood pleasure while emphasizing impermanence, fragility, and collapse. The installation presents joy as delicate and requiring continuous protection, rebuilding, and imagination. The themes align with an exhibition centered on joy as a radical human capacity that persists amid instability.

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