From March 28 to July 12, 2026, the Nivola Museum in Orani (Nuoro) hosts Blue Blooded, the first Italian solo exhibition of artist Hannah Levy (New York, 1991). Curated by Giuliana Altea, Antonella Camarda and Luca Cheri, the exhibition presents a nucleus of new sculptures inspired by the horseshoe crab, or limulus: an ancient marine arthropod, surviving for hundreds of millions of years, whose blue blood is now used in safety testing for vaccines and medical devices. A creature at once primordial and present-day, the limulus is often called a “living fossil”: remaining almost unchanged since the Triassic era, it retains traces of prehistory in its form. Its deep blue blood contains Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL), a key substance for detecting bacterial contamination in pharmaceuticals. Each year thousands of specimens are captured and deprived of their blood and then released back into the sea, in a practice that raises growing ethical and environmental questions. Although this process is still widely used in the United States (while there has been a synthetic alternative approved in Europe since 2020), it opens urgent questions about the limits of natural resource exploitation and human responsibility to other species.
The artist’s works bring together materials such as polished metal, silicone, and translucent glass, resulting in fluid, sinuous forms that evoke imagery close to Surrealism, recalling animals, insects, and organic structures, but also, more subtly, suggest references to the elegance of Art Nouveau and modernist design. Inserting himself into a line that includes figures such as Meret Oppenheim, Louise Bourgeois, and Robert Gober, Levy combines industrial and natural suggestions to create presences at once fascinating and disturbing.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is a large, sprawling installation made of stainless steel and silicone, resembling a light canopy supported by long, slender legs. Its proportions dialogue with the museum space, while its form simultaneously references a seaside shelter and a fossilized skeleton. The taut surface, reminiscent of a spiny shell, together with the limulus-inspired “legs,” builds a kind of architectural organism.
Next to this installation, some glass sculptures are supported by sharp metal claws. The forms appear as bodies in transformation, somewhere between fluidity and solidity. A glassy, shell-like element rests on delicate supports like an organism adapting to a new environment. In these works, glass is presented as a trace of a past process: the melting phase, shaped by the pressure of steel, fixed in a motionless time.
Another group of works consists of aluminum shells obtained from the spiny exterior of the horseshoe crab, with long sculptural tails emphasized. In one case, the inverted shell is filled with blue glass, revealing the animal’s interior. Made through the lost-wax casting technique, these objects combine traditional craft practices with archaic imagery. On the walls, claw-like stainless steel elements function as organic wall sconces: each pair supports irregular spheres of blue blown glass, generating a visual tension between sensuality and disquiet.
The horseshoe crab represents the symbolic center of the entire exhibition, a presence that orients all the works, even when it is not immediately visible.
The exhibition project was born in close dialogue with the architecture of the museum (the former washhouse of Orani) and with the figure of Costantino Nivola. The long and narrow nave, the gabled roof with exposed rib-like beams and the strong identity of the space formed the starting point for the artist’s research. Along the way, Levy identified a surprising affinity with Nivola: in fact, the sculptor experimented with the sandcasting technique while playing with his children on Springs Beach, Long Island, the same place where Levy collected limulus specimens.
Blue Blooded - Blue Blooded thus intends to highlight Hannah Levy’s ability to construct sculptural universes in which technology and nature are deeply intertwined, inviting reflection on the fragility of the balances that sustain contemporary life and the need to rethink our relationship with the living world.
Hannah Levy makes sculptures and installations that investigate the relationships between the body, desire and materiality. Her work combines industrial materials, particularly polished metal, with elements such as silicone and glass to create forms that evoke animal and plant anatomies, as well as design objects. He participated in the 59th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams (2022), and has exhibited at major international institutions and galleries. His works are in public and private collections and have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Blue Blooded - Sangue blu is his first solo exhibition in an Italian institution.
Hours: Daily from 10:30 am to 7:30 pm. Closed Wednesdays.
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| Nivola Museum hosts Hannah Levy's first Italian solo exhibition: new sculptures inspired by the horseshoe crab |
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