We Marry You, O Sea engages with Venice and its lagoon “from below”.

Attentive to the lagoon's ebbs and floods, the film juxtaposes archival photographs of the lagoon's conversion into an industrial frontier, with present-day submerged perspectives.

An original score composed from underwater recordings gathers the lagoon's acoustic lifeworlds: marine crackles and pulses, infrastructural hums, passing vessels, and drifting human voices.

The title refers to the “Marriage to the Sea,” a medieval ritual during which the Doge cast a ring into the lagoon, declaring: “We marry you, O sea, as a sign of true and perpetual dominion”, revealing imperial and patriarchal logics that continue to define the lagoon as a site of possession, and reflecting on Venice’s ongoing pursuit of mastery over the watery.

Sonia Levy is an artist and research-led filmmaker with a Berber-Polish background. Her practice combines site-specific inquiry and interdisciplinary collaborations to examine how Western expansionist and extractive logics reshape hydrosocial worlds. Attentive to how power reorganises ecologies below the sea, her work mobilises submerged perspectives to illuminate fragile, often obscured histories.

Her films and installations have been presented at Tate Modern; ICA London; Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza; Sainsbury Centre; CCA Glasgow; Radius CCA; Ocean Space; and Kunsthal Aarhus. Her research has been published in the Journal of Visual Culture and by MIT Press, and presented at TU Delft, NYU Gallatin, and UC Santa Cruz.

Levy is a 2026 Mondes Marins resident at the Camargo Foundation, and co-awardee with Bint Mbareh and Maria Montero Sierra of the 2026–27 TIDAL ArtS residency in the Azores, hosted by Anda&Fala and funded by the European Union. She is an Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Art, School of Architecture.

www.sonialevy.net

Credits

A film by Sonia Levy Commissioned by TBA21–Academy and TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary with the support of STARTS, an initiative by the European Commission, and the European Marine Board’s EMBracing the Ocean artist in residence program, an activity contributing to the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030) as well as the local support of the Marine Biology Station Umberto D'Ancona, University of Padova. Underwater Cinematography: Sonia Levy with the help of Sam Smith Cinematography: Sonia Levy Editing: Sonia Levy and Sam Smith Underwater Sound Recording: Sonia Levy, Jez riley French with Pheobe riley Law Music: Lydia Samuels Underwater Sound Recording Arrangement: Lydia Samuels and Sonia Levy Vocals: Lydia Samuels, Dominic Stichbury Recorded by: Nicholas O’Brie, Upcycled Sounds Soundscape designer: Udit Duseja Researcher and assistant: Chiara Famengo Scientific Advisors: Heather Anne Swanson, Alberto Barausse, Ifor Duncan With the kind permission of SEPOline: a project to apply innovative solutions for artisanal fishing (EMFF Veneto region – Measure 1.26 INNOVATION – Beneficiary: Scientific Institute CESTHA, Experimental Center for Habitat Conservation) Archivio fotografico del Comune di Venezia, Fondo Giacomelli Archivio fotografico dell’Ente della Zona Industriale di Porto Marghera Many thanks to: María Montero Sierra, Markus Reymann; Meredith Root-Bernstein, Sam Smith and Chiara Famengo; Filippo Picardi, Emily Sepe, Cristina Breggion, Andrea Sambo and Mattia Panin; Matteo Stocco and Giacomo Carraro; Federico Riccato, Riccardo Fiorin, and Giacomo Cipolato; Barbara Vanin, Roberto Ranieri and Michela Ballarin; Gianluca Palma; Federica Cacciatore and Rosella Briscolò Brusà; Angela Pomaro, Irene Guarneri, Fantina Madricardo and Marta Picciulin; Jane Da Mosto; Pietro Daniel Omodeo; Francesco Visentin; Amina Chouaïri; Pietro Consolandi, Miriam Calabrese and Barbara Nardacchione; Paolo Rosso; Hélène Wand-Polak and Albert Levy; Hanna Rullman and Gabriella Hirst; and Filip Tydèn