Artworks in the public space for UNOC
1h 3mn · Easy. · 6 steps
In June 2025, the City of Nice welcomes the 3rd United Nations Conference on the Ocean (UNOC 2025).
This international summit brings together world leaders and governments to debate and decide on the future of our planet.
On this occasion, the City of Nice places its 6th Biennale des Arts under the sign of the Ocean and federates around this project cultural, institutional and partners.
“As the host city of the 3rd United Nations Conference on the Ocean, Nice must be, through its cultural programming, the lever of understanding and appropriation of the issues raised by the summit. Our goal is to touch the hearts and minds to become an actor of change and to initiate this indispensable and inevitable transitionChristian Estrosi, Mayor of Nice, President of the Metropolis Nice Côte d’Azur, President Delegate of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Region.
For the first time the Nice Arts Biennial is enriched by a proposal works in public space, carried out by major artists from the national and international scene.
This urban artistic journey, proposed by the General Police Station of the Biennale, is on the Promenade des Anglais and the Promenade du Paillon 1, a green cast that connects the seafront to the MAMAC currently closed for renovation.
The proposals of thesix artists and duos gathered together take part in a poetic and dreamlike articulation around the ocean's imaginaries - while echoing major issues debated at UNOC.
Steps
Shilpa Gupta
5mn
Shilpa GuptaThis Horizon Inside of Us (This horizon in us) Animated work in Led 975 x 487 cm © Shilpa Gupta / Galerie Continua – Production City of Nice – Biennale des Arts et de l'Océan de Nice, 2025 « La mer autour de nous » – Photo : Jean-Chistophe Lett
Gupta’s work questions the cultural, individual and collective identity, and how they are shaped by social status, gender, systems of authority and beliefs.
Fascinated by technology, it invests them with a sensitive dimension. Here the sentences appear as a heartbeat in the succession of their illuminations and intermingled effacements.
It often involves several languages, perspectives in its works. It offers an open reading to the subjectivity of the viewer and the context in which they are shown.
"This horizon in us" is here on the Urdu sky (practiced in North India and Pakistan), English and Hindi. About the work, the artist writes: “The work refers to the physical site and the horizon (...) on which it relies as a reminder of the history of the oceans that celebrates the movement of people and the inevitable mutation and dispersion when two beings or cultures come into contact with each other"
Faced with the sea, the cradle of civilizations, exchanges and multiculturalism, it invites us to think of alliedness empathically.
In particular, she participated in the Venice, Berlin, Kochi, Lyon, Gwangju, Havana, Yokohama, Liverpool and exhibited in the world's largest museums.