We got out early because the apartment was to be cleaned at 10:00. Our first stop was Puppa for coffee and then we went to the Ukraine exhibit at the Scuola di Misericordia. It was, in a word, overwhelming. I could easily write a few pages about it, but here are some of the highlights of the emotional visit. In the center of the main room are these four portraits of volunteer soldiers: an IT tech, an artist, a chemist and a lawyer. They were painted from photos the artist’s husband took. They are called “Max in the Army.”

All around the main floor were small tables and chairs where you could read the diary of a woman in the earliest days of the war. She wrote an entry every day from the first day of the attack through April 4th. Heart wrenching.

Upstairs was the signature piece of the pavillion: Valeria is one of 4 million children who have been forced to leave their homes from the war.

And if I wasn’t already an emotional wreck, there was this wall of portraits of mothers who lost sons in the Russo-Ukraine war in 2014, under each photo was the mother’s and son’s name and the pet name she called him:

There were more works, not all of them so depressing, but I sniffled my way through and finally we left.

We sat for a while, took off our jackets on what turned into a beautiful day, took off our masks and just breathed in and out. They had said that the Ukrainian artists wanted to keep the war in the front of our minds. They certainly accomplished it with this show.

Next stop–Palazzo Mora on Strada Nova. The Palestine exhibit is in this collateral space as are many other small exhibits–even one of American Indian beaded works. Again, there were a lot of sad pieces. Climate change was a recurrent theme. One room I liked a lot was about color but the small plexiglass boxes she made did not photograph well. There was this entertaining, majestic, metal stag at the entrance to the show:

We didn’t see all the installations and will go back again for the top two floors. Feeling pretty wiped out, we walked over to Vino Vero for a perfect cicchetti lunch. They had a delayed opening so we got to just sit in the sun on the canal and wait for about 15 minutes. Great for people watching! We had some delicious bites and started home by way of the Ormesini canal. We stopped in at the Dutch Pavilion which is a movie. You watch after removing your shoes to lie on pillows and bolsters, mostly pink, on the floor. The film (at least the part we watched) was all about writhing bodies, lots of them, covered with oil and maybe clay. We watched a couple more bits afterwards and left. The title of the show is “When the body says Yes” and it is obviously all about sex and gender identification.

After a little rest time, we did Facetime with Josh, Mavis and Juna and finally with Sulli for her big first birthday.

We made a quick trip to the Coop and then to the fruit and vegetable stand. I got their last Roman cauliflower as a gift, which we had for dinner with some store-bought tortellini.

The feelings from the morning’s experience still linger. Make love, not war.