Nabatele

Nabatele is a large-scale open-air installation by London-based artist and architect Anna Kamyshan. Set upon a massive rock floating over the Venetian lagoon, a synagogue appears in the sky, exposed to atmospheric forces. Rather than holding land, it inhabits airspace, remaining responsive to its environment. The work recalls René Magritte’s The Castle of the Pyrenees – a stone levitating above the sea crowned by a castle – often read as hope without ground.

Responding to contemporary global uncertainty marked by conflict and displacement, Nabatele frames refuge as provisional rather than secure. Its unrooted yet stable condition is sustained by a steady inner glow reminiscent of the Ner Tamid, the synagogue’s eternal light, reflecting the artist’s layered identity as Ukrainian with Jewish and Russian heritage.

The Yiddish diminutive -ele softens nabat – a word spanning Slavic and Semitic languages – shifting it from warning to quiet presence. Referencing lost wooden synagogues of Eastern European shtetls and the non-territorial idea of Yiddishland, the work evokes continuity through memory rather than land. In dialogue with Venice’s Ghetto history, Nabatele exists neither as monument nor memorial, but as a gentle presence that holds unresolved belonging without claiming permanence.