Blue Blooded by Hannah Levy at Museo Nivola
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- 3 min read
The distinct visual language of American sculptor Hannah Levy (New York, 1991) first caught the attention of the Italian audience at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams, in 2022.
Now, her first solo institutional exhibition in Italy, titled “Blue Blooded,” is on display at Museo Nivola in Orani, Sardinia, where it will run until July 12.
Curated by Giuliana Altea, Antonella Camarda, and Luca Cheri, the exhibition showcases six new pieces (all works "Untitled") conceived by the artist between 2025 and 2026, with the support of Fondazione di Sardegna and the Italian gallery MASSIMODECARLO.
Opened in 1995, Museo Nivola sits on a picturesque hill once home to the town’s public washhouse. It is dedicated to preserving and promoting the work of Costantino Nivola (1911-1988), an influential sculptor born in Orani who left his mark on international Modernism through his work in both the United States and his native Sardinia.
Today, the Museo Nivola is internationally recognized not only for preserving the legacy of Costantino Nivola but also for its dynamic program of contemporary art exhibitions. In recent years, the museum has hosted major presentations by renowned artists, including Tony Cragg (2018), Peter Halley (2021), Bona de Mandiargues (2023), and, more recently, Nathalie Du Pasquier (2025) and Mona Hatoum (2025).
“Blue Blooded” by Hannah Levy offers intriguing parallels between Nivola's work and Levy's own contemporary practice, which engages with and reinterprets the language of Modernism through bodily, organic, and psychologically charged sculptures.
On the same beach in Long Island where Nivola pioneered his sand-casting technique while playing with his children, Levy has recently begun collecting limulus specimens. Living fossils native to North America, at risk of extinction, these creatures (also known as horseshoe crabs) have captivated the artist after discovering their peculiar shape and researching the properties of their blue blood, which is still widely used in biomedical research.
Nivola’s embrace of sand-casting in 1953 was a breakthrough, allowing sculptures to meld seamlessly with architectural spaces. By casting concrete or plaster into specially molded sand, he created bas-reliefs that transcended mere decoration, becoming integral components of the construction process. Nivola's work was informed by his encounter with Le Corbusier in 1946, shortly after the Sardinian artist fled to the USA in 1939 to escape persecution due to his wife's Jewish heritage. This connection with Le Corbusier empowered Nivola to explore how each element, in fulfilling a plastic function, contributes to the overall visual and functional narrative of architecture. Similarly, Levy extends this logic into a contemporary sculptural language, where every material choice becomes both structural and expressive.
As well as Nivola, Hannah Levy has also experienced a breakthrough in her artistic practice. While earning her BFA at Cornell University in New York in 2013 and her Meisterschüler degree at Städelschule in Frankfurt in 2015, she discovered that tubular steel could transform from something cold and rigid into a lively presence. Both Levy and Nivola share a deep trust in the skillful ingenuity of the hand and a belief in the forms that arise from direct interaction with materials. Levy's work, protean presence capable of inhabiting multiple sculptural identities, embodies the interplay of form and touch, marrying the tactile with the conceptual in ways that invite engagement.
In “Blue Blooded,” this ethos shines through in her use of liquid silicone.
The main piece in the exhibition, an expansive silicone skeletal structure, is elegantly supported by long, tentacle-like tubular steel legs evoking animal shapes one might imagine discovering in the depths of a marine ecosystem. The organic quality of silicone imbues the artwork with a softness akin to the skin of limulus itself.
Another medium, blue glass, blown and encased in a steel cage or representing the delicate inner anatomy of limulus in aluminum shells, also represented another significant turn in Levy's artistic journey. This engagement with glass has pushed her practice into new dimensions, where fragility meets strength, precision meets fluidity and unpredictability, creating a structural tension that captivates and intrigues.
The incorporation of liquid silicone and glass in the “Blue Blooded” artworks enhances the exhibition’s broader reflection on the relationship between man and nature and the devastating impact our choices may have on the ecological ecosystem.
As curator Antonella Camarda reflects on the implications of a continued use of limulus’s blue blood for scientific research, she poses a critical question: “The blue blood of limulus confronts us with extremely important ethical choices. Can we really destroy nature for the well-being of a single species?”
