July 21, 2026 (Positano, Italy) – A double work by Norwegian artist Ida Ekblad is the fourteenth commission to be unveiled as part of the Artists at Le Sirenuse programme at the Le Sirenuse hotel in Positano.
Conceived by the hotel’s co-owners Antonio and Carla Sersale and overseen by British curator Silka Rittson-Thomas, the programme was inaugurated in 2015 with Martin Creed’s neon installation Don’t Worry. Since then, artists including Stanley Whitney, Rita Ackermann, Alex Israel, Matt Connors, Caragh Thuring, Nicolas Party and Caroline Bachmann, among others, have been invited to create works that enter into fertile dialogue with the history, decor and place in the landscape of the legendary Amalfi Coast hotel. Le Sirenuse celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2026 and, three generations on, is still owned and managed by the Sersale family.
Norwegian artist Ekblad has created two interconnected works for Le Sirenuse. Placed on the wall of one of the communal rooms at the heart of the family villa that predated the hotel, Bathyal Belle Inflorescence is an oil painting so vibrant it seems to leap from the canvas. Channelling Ekbald’s memories of childhood days in her family’s summer house and the yet more distant generations who had left a trace there, it’s a work of restless nostalgia.
The artist traces her inspiration back not to a visual stimulus, but to an olfactory one. “I think one memory that a lot of people can relate to could be the scent in an old summer house that maybe their grandparents used to live in”, she explains. “I was a kid in the 1980s”, she continues, “but the drawers in our summer house had things still kept there from the 1960s, like a hairbrush and some perfume, and there was this paper in the drawer with a kind of powdery, weird sixties smell”. The passage from scent to canvas was, Ekblad says, a short leap, one that enacted a kind of synaesthesia: “If the paper in that drawer had a pattern, like a simple rose pattern, then that would be something that I would look for in my head or fantasise about and try painting. Painting is sometimes a way of remembering something that no longer exists except in the imagination”.
True to the artist’s practice, the paint is applied in thick, uneven patches, strips and clumps, lending them the textural tension of turbulent seawater, crumpled tissue paper or lava frozen in mid-flow. The colours are joyous and assertive, dancing among but not always with one another, each one asserting its proud independence.
The painting is complemented by Succubus, a separate piece in sand-cast bronze, that has been affixed to a nearby chimney breast. A mysterious eye-shaped emblem, encasing a form that seems half-mask, half woodland creature, evokes a personal archaeological dig.
Le Sirenuse’s commitment to contemporary art goes beyond the Artists at Le Sirenuse programme to embrace its Positano streetside venue Franco’s Bar and new arrival Le Sirenuse Mare. Five years in the making, this beach club in Nerano, a thirty-minute boat hop from Positano, opened in April 2026. Le Sirenuse Mare reserves a prominent place for contemporary art and artisanship. Scattered across a series of terraces that ascend from the pebbled shore are sculptural and ceramic creations by Giuseppe Ducrot, Rose Wylie, Alba Clemente, Bosco Sodi, Prince of Sun, Lucio Liguori, and other artists. As at the beach club’s parent hotel, these works enter into conversation with the Mediterranean genius loci of a deeply special place.
Across more than seven decades, Mack has shaped the course of post-war European art through his pioneering exploration of light as both material and medium. In 1957, together with Otto Piene, he co-founded the avant-garde ZERO movement, which proposed an art grounded in universal elements, challenging established conventions and fundamentally reshaping the visual language and philosophical discourse of its time. Presented in the year of the artist’s 95th birthday, Spectrum Mundi extends this radical vision into the present, celebrating the continued evolution and significance of his artistic practice.
NOTES TO EDITORS:
About Ida Ekblad:
Born in Oslo in 1980, Ida Ekblad works across painting, sculpture, performance, poetry and filmmaking. She has also created textiles and ceramics, designed furniture, and even started a record label with Norwegian DJ Karima F. Her influences reach far and wide from artists of the past such as Munch, Odillon Redon, Florine Stettheimer and Helen Frankenthaler to Japanese manga, street art, brand logos, fairytales, internet memes and a whole playlist of musical touchstones. Her work has twice featured in the Venice Art Biennale, in 2011 and 2017, and been showcased in dozens of international group and solo shows. World’s Largest Metaphor, Ekblad’s first major solo exhibition in the UK, will open at Hepworth Wakefield on 21 November 2026.
About Le Sirenuse:
Le Sirenuse opened in 1951, in what until then had been the Sersale family’s summer house in Positano. Today the 58-room Amalfi Coast resort is considered an Italian hospitality icon, though it still retains the intimate, cultured atmosphere of a private home. More than a mere hotel, it has become over the years a lifestyle reference point that brings into fertile dialogue the worlds of fashion, culture, gastronomy, mixology and wellbeing, creating connections and crafting personal narratives. Scenic La Sponda restaurant, informally glamorous bar-bistrot Aldo’s and the resort’s chic little Pool Bar showcase this southern Italian region’s authentic seasonal produce, while the Don’t Worry Bar is a true insiders’ speakeasy in tune with the rhythm of Positano nights. Le Sirenuse also features a refreshingly contemporary Spa designed by architect Gae Aulenti, where a range of signature treatments are available, alongside a fitness area with two total-workout Megaformer machines. The resort is celebrated worldwide for its all-inclusive weekly activities, which include trekking on some of the Amalfi Coast’s spectacular mountain trails and more leisurely sunset cruises on the Sant’Antonio, the family’s traditional gozzo fishing boat. Assembled over decades by art and antique collector Franco Sersale, the hotel’s elegant décor today enters into conversation with a growing site-specific contemporary art collection featuring talents of the calibre of Martin Creed and Nicolas Party, while the light-filled bedrooms are havens of dolce vita style. Now as in the past, Le Sirenuse is a family affair. Third-generation Sersales, Aldo and Francesco, are increasingly involved in the day-to-day running of a hotel that their parents Antonio and Carla began to manage in 1991. Carla currently curates Emporio Sirenuse, the fashion and lifestyle brand she founded in 2013, which takes inspiration from the deep-rooted Mediterranean culture of this charmed enclave south of Naples. For more information, please visit Sirenuse.it/ | Facebook | Instagram | @lesirenuse
Images Credits:
1. Installation view of Ida Ekblad’s ‘Bathyal Belle Inflorescence’ and ‘Succubus’ at Le Sirenuse. 2026. Courtesy of Le Sirenuse. Photography © Roberto Salomone
2. Installation view of Ida Ekblad’s ‘Succubus’ at Le Sirenuse. 2026. Courtesy of Le Sirenuse. Photography © Roberto Salomone