Mar Nostro

Art installation Mar Nostro, UV LAB's artwork, explores the Mediterranean as a shared space, criss-crossed by flows, migrations and exchanges.

Art installation

Mar Nostro, UV LAB's artwork, explores the Mediterranean as a shared space, criss-crossed by flows, migrations and exchanges.

Its title reworks the historical expression Mare Nostrum — "our sea" — to turn it into a contemporary question: who is "we" today? To whom does this sea belong?

The pavilion is organised around three crossings evoking Africa, Asia and Europe. The architecture favours circulation over the border, porosity over enclosure.

The motif unites Mediterranean cultures in a contemporary language, between solid and void, relief, light and colour, forming a writing that shifts with movement.

Inspired by the Lingua Franca, the hybrid language of Mediterranean ports, the project pays tribute to the shared culture that shapes us, to those who crossed this sea, and to those who lost their lives in it.

A work produced as part of the Saison Méditerranée 2026 by UV LAB, a transdisciplinary design and architecture laboratory based at the Cité des arts de la rue.

Coproductions: Ville de Marseille, Institut français and Lieux Publics, Centre national des arts de la rue et de l'espace public, and Pôle International de Production et de Diffusion.

Carried out with the collaboration of the Cascadeurs et Cascadeuses from the employment-integration worksite of the Cité des arts de la rue.