Crystal Bridges Museum will present a comprehensive art exhibition by Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Jewel during the 2026 Venice Biennale. The exhibition, titled "Matriclysm: An Archeology of Connections Lost," will run from May 10 through November 22 at the Salone Verde, located within walking distance of the Fondazione Prada. The show will be curated by Joe Thompson, Crystal Bridges' curator-at-large.
The exhibition's title combines the words "matriarchy" and "cataclysm," reflecting its central themes of feminine memory and the mythology of feminine power. In a recent interview, Jewel explained that the show "explores cataclysmic events to matriarchy" and examines what she defines as feminine energy - "the urge to connect and nurture, which everybody exhibits." She views the disconnection from feminine energy as a societal illness that prevents people from connecting deeply with themselves and others.
"Matriclysm" will feature paintings from Jewel's "Ceremony" series, which focuses on matriarchs and women in menopause. These surrealist-influenced portraits imagine Jewel's matrilineal lineage extending both backward and forward through time. The artist notes that humans are among the few species that experience menopause, which scientists believe evolved to allow women to focus on teaching rather than reproduction. The series explores themes of women as educators, feminine memory, and feminine erasure.
Three large-scale sculptures will serve as centerpieces of the exhibition: "First Mother," "Seven Sisters," and "Heart of the Ocean." "First Mother," created in collaboration with sculptor Patrick Bongoy, depicts a pregnant kneeling woman and will be displayed outdoors. "Seven Sisters" takes its name from the Pleiades star cluster, referencing the sister-nymphs of Greek mythology. The eight-foot-tall "Heart of the Ocean" represents the ocean as "the womb, the wellspring of all living souls on earth."
Jewel's connection to nature stems from her childhood in Alaska, where despite a difficult home life, she found support and love in the natural world. "I wanted to see if I could create a work that gave you that feeling that nature was reaching for you - a mother that is always reaching, even though we're not always kind in return," she explained. This experience inspired her to recreate what she calls a "big nature experience" for indoor museum visitors.
The "Heart of the Ocean" sculpture incorporates cutting-edge technology, featuring a computer system fed by live oceanic data from the Atlantic Ocean. Scientists from NASA, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley helped compile data measuring wave height, precipitation, and salinity. This information activates 60,000 programmable light points within the sculpture. At one point, the piece turns red for five seconds, representing 150 years of compressed ocean warming data.
Jewel's fascination with science dates back to her homeless period, when she read quantum physics and superstring theory. "It just made me feel like anything is possible," she recalled. The challenge with "Heart of the Ocean" was creating something harmonically pleasing while remaining faithful to the mathematical data. "The height of an ocean wave may resemble a wave, but as the wave goes higher, the note goes lower," she explained. "You get more than one piece of data like that, and it starts sounding like a fax machine."
The exhibition includes multiple soundscapes that respond to different data sources. "Seven Sisters" features seven women singing, with each orb of light having its own voice, creating a chorus that fills the space using open-source data from the Pleiades constellation. A third soundscape incorporates heartbeat and breathing sounds in another room. The show also includes an eight-foot-tall tapestry depicting a woman in a green business suit engulfed in flames, chosen partly because tapestry has traditionally been considered "woman's work."
Jewel studied drawing and sculpture at Michigan's Interlochen Arts Academy while training as an operatic singer. Her successful music career temporarily shifted her focus away from visual art, though she continued drawing privately. She recently returned to painting and sculpture, leading to her first museum exhibition at Crystal Bridges in 2024.
The previous Crystal Bridges exhibition, "The Portal: An Art Experience by Jewel," combined visual art, music, and behavioral health concepts. Jewel aimed to positively impact visitors' nervous systems through careful pacing and presentation, creating what she terms a "neuro-ceutical" effect that subtly alters brain waves. She claims the "Heart of the Ocean" sculpture can induce a Theta brainwave state - associated with deep relaxation while awake - within 20 seconds.
For the Venice Biennale presentation, Jewel envisions her exhibition as a restorative counterpoint to the event's typically hectic atmosphere. "The Biennale is amazing but very busy and hectic, and tiring and depleting," she noted. "I built this show to be a restorative counterpoint, where you can come into the cool, into the dark, and into a really reflective moment that hopefully will leave you feeling nurtured and replenished when you leave."
Crystal Bridges Executive Director Rod Bigelow emphasized the museum's commitment to supporting artists' voices and creating spaces for exploration. "Matriclysm invites audiences to engage with urgent themes and discover new perspectives, sparking the kind of dialogue that deepens our connection to art and to one another," he stated. The exhibition represents Jewel's continued evolution as a multimedia artist, bridging her musical career with her visual art practice while addressing contemporary themes of feminine power and environmental consciousness.
