Narcissus

He leans over the canal and the canal gives back the reflection — the myth inhabits the water.

Narcissus is a mural created by artist Neve in 2014 on a barge moored on the Navigli canal, Milan, curated by Airone THP.

"Narcissus" is a mural painted on a barge moored on the Navigli in Milan, in 2014, curated by Airone THP. The figure leans forward, looking down into a shattered mirror — and below the mirror, the water of the canal itself, which reflects and distorts the painting in real time. The work doesn't just depict the myth: it inhabits it. Narcissus leans over the Navigli, and the Navigli gives back the reflection, broken. The broken mirror appears here as a fully formed idea for the first time in Neve's public work — alongside "Zoloft", the pencil drawing from the same period that first explored refraction as subject. Where Zoloft was intimate and private, Narcissus is public, monumental, placed at the centre of Milan's most performative street. The Navigli is Milan's mirror. The neighbourhood where the city goes to be seen, to perform its beauty, to mistake appearance for depth. Narcissus leaning over a broken surface is also Milan leaning over itself — and finding the image fragmented, incomplete, unable to hold.