Tomás Saraceno’s pioneering and visionary artistic practice spans various fields of knowledge from astronomy to arachnology and from ecology to music. Informed by his background in architecture, Saraceno’s visually impactful and interactive structures are inspired by soap bubbles, cloud formation, or spiderwebs, natural forms that can represent complex macrocosmic structures at a micro level. His Spider/Web Pavilion 7 (2019), at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019, exemplifies Saraceno’s long-term fascination with the spiderweb, often employed as a visual analogy to represent the origins of the universe. In collaboration with leading arachnologists and researchers, Saraceno was the first to scan, analyze, and reconstruct a three-dimensional spiderweb, highlighting how these webs have yet to be properly explored and measured in terms of their exceptional architectural and physical properties.

Hybrid dark semi-social Cluster GC 12406 built by: a duet of Cyrtophora citricola—eight weeks, rotated 180° (2019) is part of Saraceno’s ongoing Hybrid Webs series that further investigates the world of spiders through direct “collaboration” with arachnids. Spiders from different species are allowed to interactively weave webs in a shared space, creating hybrid environments of coexistence. The title is a detailed description of the components involved in the web sculpture, including the type of collaborating spiders and the time needed to create the web. As in many of Saraceno’s interventions, community, sharing, and appropriation for the good of all are central concepts. He emphasizes “DIT” (doing it together) as key to improving the ecosystem. “We come from different worlds, but work together to make a better future,” the artist comments on this dialogue. Alongside his interest in learning from the architectural wisdom of spiders, Saraceno is intent on raising awareness of the rights of invertebrates, who have inhabited the earth for over 380 million years in comparison to the mere 200 thousand years of human presence on earth. In an open letter to the world, he encourages a shift from arachnophobia, a fear of spiders, to arachnophilia, an appreciation of these arachnids, as part of a growing interdisciplinary research-driven initiative to support our common struggle against extinction.  ​​

Also screening during the opening week of the Biennale is Saraceno’s film Fly with Pacha, Into the Aerocene (2023), which chronicles the record-breaking, fuel-free flight of the Aerocene Pacha ​hot-air balloon, lifting off from the salt flats of the Salinas Grandes, Argentina, as well as the struggle of local and Indigenous communities against prospective Lithium mining in the region.