May 6, 2026
10 a.m. – 3 p.m.
European Cultural Centre
Palazzo Michiel
Strada Nuova – 4391 Campo Santi Apostoli
30121 Venice, Italy
EVENT
What does it mean to be close to something, to someone, to an idea? How does art dare us to bridge the spaces between us, rendering visible the quiet depths of our shared human condition? In The Art of Intimacy, we invite you to explore the vast, uncharted territories where art, design, and theory converge, illuminating the hidden intimacies that shape our bodies, experiences, memories, and relationships.
This symposium gathers artists, designers, and theorists to unravel the intricate threads of intimacy—both as a subject and as a method of engagement. We will ask: How do intimate spaces and temporalities emerge in our work? What happens when we, as creators and participants, surrender ourselves to the subtle, almost imperceptible exchanges of sensation, affection, and tenderness? From the intimate corners of the gallery to the whispered moments in collaborative spaces, we will delve into the art that makes the unseen felt, and the unspoken, heard. This symposium will question how intimacy—once thought to be a private, isolated experience—can be re-imagined as a public and shared act of connection.
Together we will explore the powerful ways art navigates intimacy, offering new possibilities for understanding how we relate, remember, and reconfigure the world around us.
The Art of Intimacy brings the individual to the exhibition, Intimate Unthinkables. Intimate Unthinkables brings into conversation tender moments of everyday life taking place against a backdrop of global social upheaval and change. Common moments of respite and tenderness engage with contemporary realities of brutality and vulnerability.
The exhibition takes the ‘encounter’ as a point of departure to both embrace and question the multifaceted ways in which human existence is formed and informed through relationships that are both intensely personal, abstractly structural, and collectively shared.
Organized as an encounter across time – the contemporary approach to portraiture of AZ with the blending of traditional Chinese techniques and French Realism indicative of Lui Shiming’s sculptures – the exhibition takes on a documentary style recording fleeting moments of existence and existence in states of disappearance.
DIRECTORS
Dean
College of Design
Senior Fellow
Design Futures Council
University of Oregon
Affiliate Faculty
University of Texas at Arlington
Head, Department of Architecture
School of Architecture & Environment
University of Oregon
SPEAKERS (Ongoing)
Professor Emerita
Previously Held Western College Endowed Professor in the Department of Global
and Intercultural Studies at Miami University (OH)
Professor of Architecture, Princeton University
Director of the Urban Imagination Center, Princeton University
Principal of Marshall Brown Projects, Inc.
Gallery Director and Curator, Liu Shiming Art Gallery
Associate Professor, Faculty of Design and Society,
University of Technology Sydney
Phyllis and Andrew Berwick Dean and Professor of Dance, School of Music and Dance
Canadian Craft Historian and
PhD Student, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON
Co-Director and Co-Chair of Sydney College of the Arts
Higher Degree Research Coordinator
Senior Lecturer, Visual Art
Conceptual Artist
Author
Art critic, art writer, journalist, and independent curator
Panel Moderator