Organizer Information
spazioSERRA is a public art project based in Milan, founded in 2017 inside the octagonal glass pavilion of Milano Lancetti railway station — a former newsstand kiosk that was never used for its original purpose and was instead handed over to art students to convert into an experimental exhibition space. The project grew out of Artepassante, a Milan public-transit regeneration program run by the Associazione Le Belle Arti (now part of Fondazione Artepassante), in partnership with RFI (Rete Ferroviaria Italiana), which owns the station.
The space is run by collettivoSERRA, a ten-person curatorial collective spanning art, communication, and management backgrounds, working on a voluntary basis. Since 2017, spazioSERRA has hosted an annual season of site-specific projects by Italian and international artists, and has developed collaborations with institutions and collectives in Italy and abroad. In 2027 the project marks its tenth anniversary, a milestone the current call is explicitly framed around.
Title & Description
2026/2027 Open Call for Artists — "Where is the tomorrow we saw yesterday"
This open call invites artists, collectives, and research practices to develop collaborations with spazioSERRA during its 2027 exhibition and project season. Unlike a standard exhibition submission, the call does not ask applicants to submit a finished exhibition project or a fully defined proposal. Instead, selection is based on the applicant's overall artistic research — their working method, the questions running through their practice, and their compatibility with spazioSERRA's curatorial approach.
Possible outcomes of a selected collaboration include solo or group exhibitions, site-specific installations, performances, editorial productions, video projects, partnerships with external institutions, or other project forms developed jointly with collettivoSERRA after selection.
Categories
- Visual Arts
- Installation
- Performance
- Video/Film
- Site-specific
- Public Art
- Interdisciplinary Arts
- Multiple Disciplines
- Hybrid
- Research
Eligibility
- Open to contemporary artists, individuals or collectives, of any nationality and background
- Applicants must be over the age of 18
- Any artistic and multidisciplinary language is accepted
- For collectives, the same application materials are required, with works and biographies of all members combined into a single file
Program Benefits & Awards
- Use of the spazioSERRA exhibition space at no cost to the artist or collective
- A financial contribution ranging from €500.00 to €2,000.00 per selected project, amount set according to project scope and available resources
- Contribution intended to cover production costs (work remains the artist's/collective's property), travel/food/accommodation costs, and communication or promotional materials
- Curatorial support and dialogue with collettivoSERRA throughout project development
- Technical/project support from the spazioSERRA team, including exhibition layout planning where needed
- Communication and promotion of the project through spazioSERRA's own channels
- Note: the financial contribution is paid at the end of the collaboration (unless otherwise agreed) and only covers documented, traceably paid expenses with supporting fiscal documentation — it is described as a contribution toward costs, not full production coverage
Application Fee
€12.00 per applicant — a spazioSERRA 2026–2027 membership fee, payable via PayPal or bank transfer (IBAN: IT08L0501801600000017246554, payee: SPAZIOSERRA APS). For collectives, the fee is €12 multiplied by the number of participating members, with one payment required per member.
How to Apply?
Online Application
Key Dates
- Application Deadline: 6 September 2026
- First Selection: by November 2026
- Interviews with Pre-Selected Artists: November–December 2026
- Outcome Announcement (by email): by December 2026
Location
Milan, Italy
Additional Details
- Selection is made by collettivoSERRA based on quality and originality of the artistic research, coherence of practice, relevance of themes, potential for dialogue with the space and curatorial vision, and openness to collaborative/experimental approaches
- spazioSERRA reserves the right to activate collaborations at different points in the year and by varying methods, depending on the project
- Incomplete applications, or those submitted outside the specified form/method, will not be considered
- Applicants grant spazioSERRA free rights to reproduce submitted works and texts for publication, promotion, and organizational purposes; data is processed under EU GDPR (Regulation 679/2016) and Italian privacy law
- Participation implies unconditional acceptance of all terms of the call