An exhibition by Sale Docks
Le Mostrə della Laguna

The title "Le Mostrə della Laguna" - which means literally exhibitions of the lagoon - is a play on words: in Italian, "mostre" means both exhibitions and, in the feminine, monster. So what would happen if Venice's art institutions were monstrously different? What if art were freed from the logic of profit and tourism? What if instead they were places that are enlivened by the local community and the thought of care and concern? Sale Docks invites seven international artists to imagine an utopian geography of cultural spaces: seven places that are reinventing themselves in a transfeminist and decolonial manner in the name of environmental justice and the defense of public space.
Exhibitions are not just exhibitions, but s/objects, or monsters that disavow the normality of art as an object of consumption and speculation, as a product of the tourism industry and as a vehicle of gentrification. Le Mostrə is therefore not just an exhibition: The use of the figure schwa (ə) sets in motion an inclusive and generative utopia that is both proclaimed and disregarded by the art world.

Based on the knowledge that the concept of utopia assumes contradicting, controversial and ambivalent meanings, the collective Sale Docks does not understand this curatorial project as a mere exercise in fiction. This imagination is the result of fourteen years of militant artistic practices that defy the neoliberal idea of art. The pandemic has challenged this model and manifested the need for radical change. Le Mostrə is an alternative to the limitations of existing institutions, to their ties to private capital and real estate rent, as well as the conquest and valorization of subversive imaginations.

The project involves the creation of seven imaginary institutions, each curated by an artist. The functioning of every institution is based on an intersectional governance model that encompasses all mobilized policy fields and can therefore theoretically be adapted to all institutions. In addition to this governance model, every monstrous institution is defined by a mission, it is loacted in an imaginative, urban location, it is generating an archive and the public space is appropriated again.