“Leda Was a Swan” by Marianna Simnett

2025 · colour · DE · No dialogue · 5’ · Swiss premiere · In competition

“Leda Was a Swan” unfolds as an enmeshment of flesh and feathers, in which an ancient violent myth is unravelled as an embodied story of pleasure. Originally comissioned as part of Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters, the work combines stage and costume design, video, performance, sound and artificial intelligence, focusing on the commonly defined erotic fresco of Leda and the Swan retrieved in 2018 in the House of Leda of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

Marianna Simnett, Leda Was a Swan, 2025. Video Still, Courtesy: Marianna Simnett and Société, Berlin.

Director’s biography
Marianna Simnett b. London 1986, is a British-Croatian multidisciplinary artist living and working between Berlin and New York. Her immersive narratives centre around the overlapping and at times incongruous themes of vulnerability, autonomy, control, pain, metamorphosis, and care.
Simnett’s work has been exhibited internationally in solo exhibitions at venues including Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2024); LAS, Berlin (2023); Société, Berlin (2022); Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2019); Kunsthalle Zürich, Zürich (2019); MMK, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2018); The New Museum, New York (2018) and Zabludowicz Collection, London (2018). Selected group exhibitions include Chrysalis: The Butterfly Dream, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (2023); the 59th Venice Biennale: The Milk of Dreams (2022); Espressioni: The Epilogue, Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2022); and Prize of the Böttcherstraße, Kunsthalle Bremen (2022).

Film Credits 

Directed and Performed by: Marianna Simnett

Producer: Henry Eigenheer

Director of Photography: Leander Ott

AI Artist: Arash Akbari

Music & Editing: Marianna Simnett