Simone Boon returns to Venice to exhibit at Personal Structures at Palazzo Mora. Personal Structures, presented by the European Cultural Centre Italy, is a biennial exhibition held in Venice that brings together an international community of artists, curators, institutions, and creative professionals to explore the themes of Time, Space, and Existence.
The title refers to the personal, cultural, and social frameworks through which we understand our place in the world - connecting individual experience to broader cultural narratives.
Venice provides both the backdrop and the context. A city shaped by centuries of cultural exchange, it is today also contending with climate change, rising sea levels, mass tourism, and the depopulation of its historic centre - making it a fitting setting for art that engages with environmental vulnerability, heritage and the tension between the local and the global.
Conceived as an open platform and space for ideas, the exhibition invites reflection on the social, cultural and environmental conditions that shape contemporary life - and on the ways art can offer new perspectives on how we understand and inhabit our world. Boon's work acts as a key dialogue for the storyline of Personal Structures.
Exhibition Statement, courtesy of European Cultural Centre Italy:
"Where Light Meets Time" belongs to the series "Illusive Identity." In this body of work, Simone Boon explores the ephemeral nature of perception and existence through a visual language shaped by light, movement, and color. The images embrace the tension between presence and absence, clarity and ambiguity. Each photograph becomes a negotiation between what is revealed and what remains elusive, echoing the ways in which the self is constructed, performed, and shaped by inner narratives outer projections.
Working with continuous lighting, color gels, silks, and layered materials, Boon constructs compositions in which light seems to pause, and time itself holds its breath. Figures emerge, drift Into softness, dissolve into their surroundings, or remain poised in ambiguity – existing in a state of flux. These spectral forms challenge fixed notions of identity and space, capturing moments of transition rather than resolution. The imagery resists closure, offering instead a suspended moment: a threshold where time, space, and self appear to converge, yet never fully settle. Boon suggests that beauty resides within the unknowable, and that perception itself is an act of interpretation. The resulting work reflects both poetic and philosophical dimensions of existence, giving form to the intangible.
Simone Boon is a Dutch visual artist whose work explores the fluid nature of identity, perception, and transformation. Having lived across continents – from Southeast Asia to South America and Europe – her encounters with cultural diversity, unfamiliar Landscapes, and layered urban environments have become a lasting source of visual and emotional memory.
Her artistic development was profoundly shaped by her years in Malaysia and Hong Kong, where she completed a Master of Fine Art from RMIT University. The interplay of light and shadow, the sensory richness of everyday life, and the hidden, mystical layers of the street became central to her work. Her experimental photography often conveys a subtle sense of movement and temporality, reflecting an interest in ‘becoming’ rather than fixed ‘being’, and drawing philosophical inspiration from thinkers such as Henri Bergson and Søren Kierkegaard.
Trained also as a sculptor and ceramicist, she has focused primarily on photography since 2010, bringing a strong sense of materiality and spatial awareness to the medium. Simone currently lives and works between Antwerp and Amsterdam. Her work is presented, collected and exhibited internationally.
Continue reading about Personal Structures here.
Personal Structures will be on view from 9 May to 22 November 2026 at Palazzo Mora, Venice.
