Zegna Brings the Philippine Sea to Paris
An immersive exhibition created during Art Basel Paris draws viewers into the depths of Bantayan Island, exploring humanity's intimate and shifting relationship with the ocean through moving image, sound and sculptural installation.
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The sea has long possessed the power to move those who witness it, but rarely does an exhibition manage to translate its essence into a coherent meditation on our contemporary moment. During Art Basel Paris, Zegna presents ‘Learning to Breathe in a Changing World’, a continuation of a project initiated in Basel that transports viewers to the waters and lives of Bantayan Island in the Philippines. Created in collaboration with Mytheresa, the immersive environment unfolds through moving image, sound and installation, inviting contemplation of the intricate dance between humanity and the ocean.
The exhibition emerges from the work of Martha Atienza, recipient of the 2026 Visible Situated Fellowship, whose artistic practice turns toward the rhythms of fisherfolk and the landscapes they inhabit. Her perspective emerges not from distant observation but from proximity, from the knowledge that grows when a community lives closely with a changing environment. In this work, underwater perspectives become narrative devices, breathing becomes a metaphor for resilience, and the everyday lives of those who depend upon the sea speak of something far deeper than survival alone.
The Language of Change
What distinguishes this exhibition is its refusal of didacticism. Rather than presenting environmental change as abstract data or distant concern, the work invites visitors into a sensory space where the emotional and ecological dimensions of transformation become one. Moving images carry the viewer beneath the surface, where light filters through water in ways both beautiful and melancholic. Sound design amplifies the rhythm of tides and breath, the machinery of daily life, the whisper of change itself.
The installation exists as a gathering space, curated and produced by Studio Raya Amsterdam and Beam Systems, where art and consciousness meet. Visitors navigate an environment that has been carefully constructed to unsettle comfortable distance, to make visible what often remains hidden beneath the surface of consumption and indifference. The collaboration with Mytheresa, a platform known for its curatorial sensibility, ensures that the exhibition speaks to audiences for whom aesthetic experience and ethical awareness move together.
Zegna’s involvement in this project reflects a broader commitment to supporting artistic voices that engage with our world as it transforms. The house has long understood that luxury resides not merely in the material, but in the cultivation of consciousness, in the spaces where beauty and meaning converge. By bringing the sea of Bantayan Island to Paris, by positioning this exhibition during one of the art world’s most significant moments, Zegna extends an invitation to witness, to breathe alongside those whose lives remain inseparable from the waters they know so intimately.
Imagery courtesy of Zegna (@zegna).
