A large-scale installation celebrating migrants’ aspirations and inspired by the work of French street artist JR has been unveiled on the facade of the Procuratie Vecchie, the iconic 16th-century building that extends across the entire length of Venice’s St. Mark’s Square. Once home to the officials who ran the basilica, the building now houses The Human Safety Net, a foundation funded by the insurance company Generali, which aids vulnerable families and helps refugees into work.
The project, Dreams in Transit, was launched on Wednesday in collaboration with Art for Action, a Geneva-headquartered organisation that leads social change through art. The facade of the Procuratie Vecchie has been covered with 100 black-and-white portraits of migrants hung in two rows. The installation takes inspiration from JR’s Inside Out project—a platform allowing communities around the world to display frontal black-and-white portraits of its members in public spaces.
However, in contrast with Inside Out, the migrants are photographed from behind. “When you look at them from the back, you feel their sadness, the weight on their shoulders,” Amandine Lepoutre, the president of Art for Action, tells The Art Newspaper at the installation’s inauguration. She notes that, while JR was not directly involved in the exhibition, he did approve the project.
The installation complements the broader Dreams in Transit exhibition inside the Procuratie Vecchie, which opened in May. It includes six colour portraits of refugees in Lebanon by photographer Leila Alaoui, who died after being injured in a 2016 terrorist attack in Burkina Faso. Her images are accompanied by a pile of bedsheets by Lorraine de Sagazan and Anouk Maugein, evoking the hotel work often undertaken by migrants, and Ange Leccia’s glowing sea of inflatable globes, symbolising distinct yet interconnected homelands.
A further sound installation by French artist Sarah Makharine features recordings of personal aspirations shared by each of those who posed for the facade display. “We asked them to share their dreams, because it is important to dream,” Lepoutre explains.
The photographed migrants were contacted via partner NGOs of The Human Safety Net working in France, Italy and Germany. “We favour integration through work,” said Emma Ursich, the chief executive of the Human Safety Net. “Art can help bring attention to this theme and spread the individual stories of courage and resilience of these people.”
Dreams in Transit joins other recent socially engaged shows in Venice. On 2 September, Breathtaking opened at Casa Sanlorenzo, a new cultural hub founded by the luxury yacht maker Sanlorenzo. The show features Fabrizio Ferri’s photo portraits of Sting, Willem Dafoe and Susan Sarandon, posing as if suffocating in plastic, alongside a central glass coffin filled with seawater. The immersive display reflects on the fragility of ecosystems and humanity’s shared duty to protect them.
