BREAKING #319 | TRAVEL DIARY

The layering of impressions

Nicole Ex

Column

May 2026

Nicole Ex

is a writer, art historian, and founder of See All This art magazine. Since 2020, she writes a weekly column for the BREAKING-the-week art newsletter.

Column

May 2026

‘You’ll never manage,’ she says, laughing. ‘Yes I will,’ I say. ‘Just you watch. This is a carry-on suitcase that always fits everything.’ Almost everything, because when I left, I had decided to leave my hiking boots at home and economise on my raincoat. That last decision had proved especially questionable, with days of rain in both Cape Town and Venice.

On the bed lie the things that have to come back with me. The catalogue of the Biennale has been added, along with the soft mohair throw by Frances van Hasselt. After the exercise of fitting and measuring, there it is, that specific sound of satisfaction. My beloved thirty-year-old Rimowa clicks shut.

I walk to St Mark’s Square, where the very first cappuccino of the day is served to me. The promise of an empty square: after the rain, the sun begins to break through, the murmur of voices swells, but when I open my computer to write, I no longer hear or see a thing.

I think back to that layering of impressions, like strata in the Karoo. I think of all the people we met, like rare specimens from the animal kingdom. Just the day before yesterday, beside us in the bar, that rare Austrian artist couple. The sculptor Manfred Wakolbinger and jewellery maker Anna Heindl, a bright orange headscarf tied around her head.

They enthusiastically show us their film of the exclusive performance by their compatriot Florentina Holzinger: a crane above the lagoon, from which hangs a golden bell with Holzinger herself as its clapper, ringing the alarm bell with her naked body. ‘So extremely powerful,’ they conclude. ‘It’s an incredibly strong collective of different women: their permanent twinset is their nakedness.’

They themselves are no strangers to the extraordinary. Both in their mid-seventies, they go night diving, when the sea creatures rise to the surface and he can portray them with an underwater camera. The result is transparent portraits of wondrous beasts and forms. Today we will leave Venice by water and dive back into ‘ordinary’ life, full of familiar shapes.

View more videos and photos of the trip in the Travel Diary.