Six pairs of monumental white hands, up to fifteen metres high, arch across a channel of the Arsenale’s basin like a chain of bridges — each pair standing for one of six values the sculptor wanted people to build a better world around: friendship, wisdom, help, faith, hope and love.
At a glance
Building Bridges is a sculpture by the Italian-British artist Lorenzo Quinn, unveiled at Venice’s Arsenale on 9 May 2019 as part of the Venice Art Biennale’s programme, and opened to the public the following day. Six pairs of hands, each up to fifteen metres high and together spanning some twenty metres, rise from the water of the Arsenale basin and meet overhead, forming a sequence of arches over the channel near the Arsenale’s entrance in the Castello district.
Key facts
- Artist: Lorenzo Quinn (son of the actor Anthony Quinn)
- Where: the basin of the Arsenale, Castello district, Venice
- Unveiled: 9 May 2019; open to the public from 10 May 2019, alongside the Venice Art Biennale
- Made of: six pairs of monumental hands, up to 15 metres high and 20 metres wide in total
- The six values: Friendship, Wisdom, Help, Faith, Hope, Love — one pair of hands for each
- Earlier work by the same artist: “Support” (2017), a pair of giant hands appearing to hold up a Venetian palazzo from the Grand Canal
From “Support” to “Building Bridges”
Lorenzo Quinn had already drawn attention in Venice two years earlier with “Support” (2017), a pair of enormous hands rising from the Grand Canal to appear to brace the facade of the Ca’ Sagredo Hotel — a work widely read as a comment on climate change and rising water. For the 2019 Biennale, Quinn returned with a still larger and more ambitious piece: six pairs of hands, rather than one, spanning a channel of the Arsenale’s basin in a sequence of monumental arches. Where “Support” spoke of a threat, “Building Bridges” was conceived as a message of unity, each pair of hands naming a value — friendship, wisdom, help, faith, hope, love — needed to overcome division and, in the sculptor’s own words, build a better world together.
What you see
Approaching by boat along the basin, the hands rise in a receding sequence, each pair meeting at the fingertips to form a pointed arch, the largest and closest to the Arsenale’s mouth, the others stepping back and slightly smaller toward the far end of the channel. Cast in a pale material that reads as marble-white against the sky and the water, the hands are anatomically detailed — veins, knuckles, the creases of the palms — giving the huge scale an unexpectedly intimate, human quality up close.
Getting there
The sculpture stands in the basin of the Arsenale, Castello district, best seen from a boat passing through the channel or from the quaysides nearby; the Arsenale vaporetto stop (lines 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 5.2) is a short walk away.
Sources
- Halcyon Gallery, on the unveiling of Building Bridges at the 2019 Venice Biennale and its six values.
- designboom, “lorenzo quinn joins giant hands to ‘build bridges’ during venice art biennale 2019” — on the dimensions and the 9–10 May 2019 unveiling.
- lorenzoquinn.com, portfolio entry for Building Bridges, Venice, Italy.
- Luigi De Marchi, who photographed the sculpture.
Find it on the map
See this place and what’s around it →Record researched and written by Luigi De Marchi for Cultural Heritage Online, 2026.
📷 Become a Cultural Heritage Online photographer
Share your photos of places: they stay published under your name as the author. The more they're seen, the more you get noticed — and soon a contest will reward the most appreciated photos.
Log in or sign up free to add a photo