May 8, 2026

9:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.
European Cultural Centre
Palazzo Michiel
Strada Nuova – 4391 Campo Santi Apostoli
30121 Venice, Italy

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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 Liu Shiming’s sculptures – the exhibition takes on a documentary style recording fleeting moments of existence and existence in states of disappearance.

Performance and Reception

4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
European Cultural Centre
Palazzo Mora
Strada Nova – 3659
30121 Venice, Italy

Ground Trust is a contemporary dance solo, choreographed and performed by Sabrina Madison-Cannon. The accompanying music is performed by solo violinist, Sunmi Chang. The piece is rooted in the lived experience of breast cancer. It explores vulnerability, resilience, transformation, and joy. The choreography moves through a journey of rupture and repair, resistance and surrender, revealing the body as both fragile and formidable. This work reflects on survival as an ongoing process, one that reshapes identity, perception, and the very meaning of a woman’s strength.

Move Me is a collaborative, structured improvisation between choreographer Sabrina Madison-Cannon and artist Cherine Fahd, also accompanied by music performed by Sunmi Chang on solo violin. The work begins from Cherine’s choreophobia, her fear of dancing in front of others. As part of this process, Sabrina invited Cherine to describe how her body feels when she is asked to dance. Cherine responded with a series of words that form a personal bodily narrative: thick, stuck, shame, embarrassment, shy, silly, outside of myself, hunched, hiding, stiff, locked in, frozen.

Through tools of touch, pressure, and timing, Sabrina guides Cherine’s body through space, shaping movement from these sensations. The contrast in each performer’s training is central: Sabrina is trained to move, while Cherine has trained herself to hide. Set against the expressive strains of the violin, the performance remains close to discomfort, exposure, and reliance on another body – ultimately illuminating the profound strength it takes for a woman to confront her deepest fear.

Music Program notes:

Amazing Grace is based on a traditional folk tune that was widely known in the American South. Its well-loved lyrics were written by John Newton, whose life was transformed by a profound religious conversion that led him to become an Anglican minister.

Amazing Grace Variations, arranged by the brilliant violinist Ning Kam, begins with the original melody presented simply, with gentle embellishments. As the work unfolds, the music gradually transforms, taking on a wide range of characters and venturing into the worlds of blues and rock & roll. The piece concludes with a festive and dazzlingly virtuosic ascending G-major scale, crowned by a triumphant G-major chord.

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s Passacaglia is one of the earliest surviving works for solo violin. Its entire structure is built on the repetition of just four notes, over which an expressive upper voice gradually unfolds, creating a clear sense of growth and narrative.

The passacaglia is one of music’s most transparent forms—a repeating bass pattern that invites continuous variation. The word passacaglia, meaning “to walk the street,” captures the listening experience well: each repetition is like a steady footstep, familiar yet leading to new musical views. Simple and inevitable in process, Biber’s Passacaglia follows a path of striking richness and depth.

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