"Migration Addicts" was selected from hundreds of submissions from around the world for the collateral events, a section of the Biennale which shows public museum quality projects chosen by Robert Storr, the Artistic Director of the Venice Biennale.

Migration Addicts began as an ongoing project two years ago in Shanghai, investigating how migration re-determines issues related to human identity, gender and spiritual needs. The fast expansion of urban spaces, following the model of big cities , has led to new social conflicts within the social structure. Recently the tension between Western and Chinese traditional values and lifestyles, as well as the late arriving of capitalism and the persisting communism, have not hindered the Chinese impulse towards assimilating the “international standards”, while fostering its own economic development.

The project is touching upon topics which concern not only Shanghai but many other expanding Asian and Western cities. The structure of the exhibition is based on a series of interventions that will take place throughout the public space in Venice, articulating new perspectives entrenched directly in the urban environment, and methodologically operating in time and in space.

Migration Addicts investigates the questions of temporal and spatial strategies which deal with this situation. On a political and aesthetical level, these projects bring a bridge between art and life, interacting with people outside from artistic circles, expanding the idea of art and its experience, to continue an engagement in the public sphere. Venice is currently living a deep changement and its own future depends on the new structure it is undertaking. More and more Venitians are moving away from the lagoon to settle down in other towns. In the next 30-40 years, it is mathematically sure that any people will live in Venice anymore.

The artists participating in Migration Addicts face through their own culture and artistic practices the topic of migration, developing new perspectives that entrench the theme directly in the urban environment, with methodologies that operate in time and in space.

Migration Addicts provides a direct relationship with the public space where the exhibitions is hosted, reflecting on the peculiarity of the territory, investigating differences and possible points in common.

Presented and organized by ddm warehouse, Shanghai, China