Venice Design Biennale @
SPARC*, Venice, 2023
Description
The latest re-edition of the Martini Champagne glasses are presented during Venice Design Biennale. Part of ‘Auto-exotic’ curated by Francesca Giubilei and Luca Berta, set in a gorgeous 18th century Venetian apartment with set design by Alessandro Mensi.
SPARC*-Spazio Arte Contemporanea, now an exhibition space, was once a stately flat overlooking Campo Santo Stefano, one of the most famous squares in Venice. The flat, part of a probably 18th-century building, was in the latter part of the 20th century the home of a Venetian family with a passion for art and culture.
The curatorial theme:
‘The exotic is dead - long live the exotic. They stole from us elsewhere! What is to be done? There will be a selfelsewhere somewhere else. Designers from all over the world unite, self-colonize, self-appropriate!
In his seminal essay Orientalism (1978), Edward Said showed how since the eighteenth century the cultural investigation of the East, understood as the physical and mental space of exoticism, revealed conceptual connections with colonialist practices. Elsewhere, populated by odalisques and caliphs, full of mysteries and sensuality, exercised a fascination in Europe that was intertwined with the practices of political, military and commercial hegemony.’
Show
Venice Design Biennale, curated by Francesca Giubilei and Luca Berta
Set Design
Alessandro Mensi
Location
Sparc*, Venice
Date
May 19 - June 18, 2023
Press
Vogue Italia
