“Venice multiplies and refracts, like in a thousand fragments of a broken mirror. However, in this unprecedented scenario, it is at risk of losing the soul and the breath.” These are the words of Italian archaeologist and art historian Salvatore Settis in Se Venezia muore (If Venice Dies, 2014), an essay that shaped and reinforced the intellectual debate around overtourism and its effects on the social and economic landscape of the Italian city throughout the last decade. In fact, the beginning of the 2010s marked the surfacing of mass tourism, a global phenomenon that keeps seriously affecting Venice and its fragile environment, as well as its community in terms of economics and housing. Settis takes inspiration from the concept of “città invisibili” (“invisible cities”) – originally conceived by the renowned Italian writer Italo Calvino in his eponymous book (1972) – to address the identity crisis faced by cities that are art hubs - and their historical centres. The unique traditions and the richness of cultural nuances that characterise these cities, especially in Italy, are increasingly overshadowed by vague, sterile and highly stereotyped perceptions. In the case of Venice, it is the recurring image of a floating city, a decaying wreck lost somewhere between land and sea, put into service for unregulated tourism. However, the Venetian reality is far more complex and layered than how it is conventionally conveyed.

Nowadays, the local art scene offers a different perspective on the city, on its emergencies and forms of resistance. STIR asked three independent art spaces to discuss their practice, dialoguing with the landscape and the community that animates Venice. This exploration starts from A plus A, an institution that combines a gallery programme and educational activities by working hand in hand with the School for Curatorial Studies Venice. Their curatorial approach includes initiatives devoted to the new generation of local artists and the unique blend of cultural influences that this open door on the Mediterranean Sea has always been. An emblematic example is constituted by the collective exhibition Hôtel-Dieu (2023), which investigated the housing crisis that is deeply affecting the Venetian social fabric. This issue has further worsened in recent years due to the clear prevalence of tourism over other economic sectors and the consequent proliferation of tourist rentals: a phenomenon that often forces residents, even those who have been Venetians for generations, to abandon the city. Each artist contributed a bed or other furniture that could constitute not only a physical environment, but also a plurality of cultural and artistic identities, like Venice still is. Its past as a maritime republic since the Middle Ages, together with its commercial and cultural relations with Asia – particularly with the Byzantine Empire and later with the Ottoman Empire and the Arab world extending to the Far East – is a legacy that still influences its openness to the world.

However, the housing crisis is only one among the many struggles that artists and cultural professionals in general are facing to keep working and living in this city. According to Aurora Fonda, co-founder of A plus A alongside Sandro Pignotti, “the unique blend of challenges, shaped by the city's extraordinary cultural heritage, tourism-dominated economy and physical constraints” makes it hard “to build a supportive local scene for experimentation and discourse compared to larger, more diverse art capitals”. The presence of the Biennale and its role in shaping the dynamics of the Venetian art scene might also be interpreted as controversial due to what Fonda terms its “temporary and highly competitive” nature. She notes that local emerging artists struggle for visibility not only during the period when the Biennale is open to the public – in addition to all the events, collateral or contemporaneous, that surround it – but literally “year-round, and securing affordable, visible and suitable spaces for shows is a major hurdle”. The pervasive representation of Venice as a leading centre in the art field contributes to building a dream that “often clashes with the harsh practicalities of sustaining an artistic career there”: including the cost of living and rent, the “shrinking local community” and the “limited infrastructure to support innovative, non-commercial contemporary art practices”.

Despite all these adverse factors, there are art professionals who still believe in the possibility of starting new art spaces that offer a different perspective on Venice. The gallery and production studio Mare Karina chose Venice as its permanent location in 2024 after having started as an itinerant project across Europe. Their initiatives delve into diverse forms of expression, including painting, photography, design and publishing. Mare Karina’s current exhibitions are a retrospective of the Italian art critic and publisher Bruno Alfieri (1927-2008) and the collective exhibition (di) Fronte (In Front). In particular, this second exhibition is a selection of works by 14 local artists that are displayed in a restaurant opposite the studio as a tribute to the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, a postwar artistic movement whose representatives used to gather and exhibit in Venetian restaurants. Mare Karina's exhibition space is located in the heart of Castello district, not far from the Arsenale, one of the main venues for the Venice Biennale: the opportunity to operate in what is often considered the most authentic "sestiere" in Venice, while being physically close to an institution like the Biennale, deeply influences Mare Karina’s interventions.

According to its founder Marta Barina, being rooted in the Castello district allows Mare Karina “to engage with a radical local fabric and to collaborate with nearby businesses, art professionals, students and long-time residents”. Furthermore, she notes, its proximity to Arsenale enables this space to meet a more international and informed audience, unlike “the touristic crowds wandering around the centre of Venice with phones in [their] hands and lost gazes”. Barina recalls how, during the opening week of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025, “Mare Karina’s exhibition on Bruno Alfieri brought in over 1000 visitors in just the first week, without counting the hundreds who joined the opening event. We hosted museum directors, curators, gallery owners and art fair organisers from across the globe.”

These exchanges demonstrate how the Venetian art community keeps reinventing itself through connections and collaborations with local communities. At the same time, such initiatives put into context both local and international scenes by promoting a different image of the city. As the historian Mario Isnenghi wrote in his essay Se Venezia vive (If Venice lives, 2021), here, coexist, “like the tide, the ebb and flow, not only one Venice always still and identical to itself, but many Venices in movement, or on their way”. Walking in the direction of the iconic (and often overcrowded) Piazza San Marco, Campiello San Zulian emerges as a quiet spot – and is overlooked by Panorama Venezia, an independent art space co-founded in 2023 by restaurant owner Filippo Zammattio, Giovanni Giacomo Paolin and event, communication and graphic design agency MAY.

The “campo” (or “campiello”, depending on the size) constitutes a very significant element of Venetian town planning, a typical square where daily activities and logistics constantly converge. The dialogue between Panorama Venezia and its square shapes the space’s practice. In curator Giovanni Giacomo Paolin’s words, the size and position of Campiello San Zulian affords “the perfect intimacy and spatial comfort to be considered a ‘sconta’ in Venetian dialect: essentially, a lesser-known path only frequented by those truly familiar with the city”. In such a context, Panorama Venezia’s programme of exhibitions, performances and film screenings offers an opportunity “to redefine our understanding of public space” and the many ways in which the “campiello” can be crossed and experienced. Furthermore, the triangular shape, the arrangement of the windows and the way its structure projects angularly onto the square make the space an ideal device for putting into relation the two dimensions. Paolin highlights how “it's always fascinating to see how our openings and events interrupt bewildered tourist groups, playfully inverting the daily tensions we, as residents, experience.” According to the curator, the space’s windows allow us to observe the square and its visitors “as if through an aquarium” and one of Panorama Venezia’s main goals is to “increasingly project ourselves outwards, embracing the public space in its various dimensions” as in “an inverted cinema hall”.

In conclusion, Calvino’s concept of an “invisible city” may be applied to the independent (contemporary) art scene in Venice: where “the soul of the community”, as Settis described it, still breathes through the walls, the squares and the windows, as well as through the community of humans, that welcome and contribute the development of these projects. Such artistic initiatives improve the resilience of Venice, a city that constantly defies its precariousness through experimentation and does not exclusively bend to the sly commercial dynamics and dominant trends of our times.

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of STIR or its editors.