MARITIME

Grimanesa Amoros video thumbnail for MARITIME

Location: The Peninsula Hotel Istanbul Lobby | Istanbul, Turkey, 2025
15 ft x 15 ft x 15 ft (4.57 m x 4.57 m x 4.57 m)
LEDs, reflective material, custom lighting sequence, and electrical hardware.

MARITIME is a luminous light sculpture suspended in the lobby of The Peninsula Istanbul, its globe-like form evoking the fluid boundaries of ocean and identity and the ancient human compulsion to navigate the unknown.

Deriving its title from the Latin maritimus, meaning “of the sea,” MARITIME positions light as a vessel carrying memory, movement, and history across expanded geographies while referencing the nautical traditions that once connected distant civilizations.

Galerie Magazine (2025) noted that the work nods to Istanbul’s nautical past, evoking the shape of a ship and bringing the currents of the Bosphorus within the hotel’s interior.

The sculpture’s light sequence travels across its surface like waves or constellations, echoing early navigational knowledge while confronting the ecological consequences of rising tides and receding coastlines.

Conceived as the interior counterpart to PASSAGE, MARITIME completes the site-specific project A Wave of Time (2025), in which light becomes a shared language between exterior monument and intimate interior space.

The work received international press attention from Vogue Turkey, Galerie Magazine, and ARTnews (all 2025), affirming Grimanesa Amorós’s continued prominence as a leading voice in monumental public light art.

MARITIME, deriving from the Latin word maritimus, meaning “of the sea,” rhythmically explores the oceans and waters. In this artwork by Grimanesa Amorós, the light formation becomes a vessel, one that carries memory, movement, and light across expanded geographies. Referencing nautical history and ancient modes of navigation, the piece invites viewers to consider how journeys—physical, historical, and emotional—are charted across both water and time, along with the untold and spoken stories of the waves of adventure, while also commenting on the unbalanced state of our seas.

The light sculpture’s form suggests a globe yet resists fixed borders, alluding instead to the fluidity of identity. The piece twists and turns internally, exploring the delicate ecosystem of the sea. This ever-shifting artwork holds not only the stories of waters and waves, but the pressing responsibility to protect them. The light component of the sculpture explores its surface like waves or constellations, echoing the way early travelers once relied on stars and tides to cross unknown distances. MARITIME reminds us all of the rise of tides and the regression of coastlines, often accelerated by our trade, travel, and neglect.

This artwork prompts us to confront what is vanishing. It’s the light sequence, like its form, pulses as if a siren from the ocean calls us all to remind its viewer that change is possible and necessary.

MARITIME reflects on the human spirit’s quest to seek, or as the artist calls it, to embrace the “romance with the unknown,” becoming a nexus of past, present, and future, embodying movement and the intangible routes through which we navigate our identities and places that inspire us.

A Wave of Time, 2025
The Peninsula Hotel, Istanbul
The Bosphorus strait has long been a connector between East and West—developed by centuries of migration, trade, and cultural exchange. Time controls the waters ebbs and flows, structuring how people move through a space and reflects memory—is carried across generations.

In A Wave of Time, Grimanesa Amorós explores Istanbul’s layered histories through two site-specific installations: PASSAGE and MARITIME. Installed in The Peninsula’s historic clock tower, PASSAGE reflects on time, migration, and cultural heritage. Inside the hotel’s lobby hangs, MARITIME, evoking the rhythms of the Bosphorus emphasizing the strong tides and seafoam—bringing the outside currents within.

Together, these works form a single narrative: light as a vessel connecting people, place, and memory.