VENICE — We met artist Marinella Senatore at La Casa di the Human Safety Net inside the Procuratie Vecchie on Piazza San Marco, on the eve of the 61st Venice Biennale Arte. Her exhibition “We Rise by Lifting Others” opens here on May 7 and runs until March 22, 2027. At its heart is a monumental luminaria, the kind of baroque light architecture that lit southern Italian street festivals long before electricity reached the South, now rebuilt with recycled mercury-free green neon. Around it hang glowing tapestries embroidered with the Chanakya School of Craft in Mumbai, carrying sentences born from more than a year of workshops with families, children and stigmatised groups from Mumbai to the Mediterranean to South Africa. Born in Cava de’ Tirreni in 1977, trained as a violinist, then in fine arts in Naples and cinematography in Rome, Senatore founded the School of Narrative Dance in 2012, which has since drawn more than 8 million people across 23 countries. She lit Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Dior Cruise show in Lecce, has shown at the Centre Pompidou, the High Line and MAXXI, and in 2026 alone is Artist of the Year at Rome’s Galleria Nazionale and headed to the Chengdu Biennale.