From May 14 to 17, Venice once again hosts VBRA Venezia – The New Creative Voice, a project dedicated to emerging fashion and contemporary arts that transforms the city into a diffuse platform for exhibitions, performances, fashion shows and site-specific interventions. More than fifty local and international designers and brands will animate venues across the lagoon with a programme that intertwines aesthetic research, independent practices and cultural reflection.
Founded in 2024 by Venetian siblings Francesca de Paoli and Paolo Marco de Paoli, VBRA Venezia promotes a vision of the city beyond mass tourism, building connections between fashion, photography, music, art and the local community. The New Creative Voice represents the core of this research: a space devoted to new creative languages and to fostering connections between artists, designers and audiences.
The theme of this third edition is “Taste”, understood not as a fixed aesthetic category but as a critical and political field. In a present dominated by algorithms, consensus and visibility, the festival reflects on the erosion of personal judgement and on the transformation of taste into a collective and homogenising dynamic. In this sense, the event attempts to reopen a space for choice, risk and experimentation.
Participants are selected according to criteria that privilege innovation, sustainability, conceptual research and craftsmanship, with attention paid not only to the final product but also to the creative process behind it.
Among the main events, on Friday May 15 at 9 pm, the Fondazione Querini Stampalia will host an exhibition bringing together twenty designers and brands within the library rooms, exceptionally opened to the public for the occasion.
The project is supported by Fondazione Sozzani, founded by Carla Sozzani and Kris Ruhs and now under the creative direction of Sara Sozzani Maino, committed to supporting new generations of creatives through exhibitions, archives, publications and educational programmes.
