The Affection Lab invites Iuav students from all study programmes and years to participate in Narratives of Desire – Mythologies of Distance, a collective exhibition taking place in Venice and funded by the Iuav Student Senate.

The exhibition explores digital forms of intimacy, with a particular focus on sexting as a space of desire, imagination, distance, and self-representation. Through words, images, voice, absence, projection, and emotion, sexting creates a field where the body is not physically present, but is instead imagined, narrated, performed, and reconstructed.

Narratives of Desire – Mythologies of Distance approaches this phenomenon not as a simple replacement for physical intimacy, but as a contemporary practice that shapes the way we experience desire, vulnerability, identity, gender, boundaries, and connection. The project reflects on the poetic, psychological, social, and cultural dimensions of digital intimacy, asking how desire is produced through distance, lack, fantasy, and communication.

We are interested in artistic practices that respond to these themes through experimental, poetic, critical, or personal perspectives. We welcome works that explore intimacy with or without touch, the body as text or image, self-representation, digital desire, fantasy, shame, anticipation, absence, projection, emotional exchange, and the transformation of relationships within digital spaces.

Author of the concept: Andreja Drobnjak
Co-curators: Ali Mezher, Lisa Vasileva and Andreja Drobnjak

We invite Iuav students to submit artistic, poetic, performative, visual, textual, sonic, digital, or research-based works responding to the theme.
Therefore, submissions may include, but are not limited to: visual artworks, photography, video, sound, text, poetry, performance, installation proposals, digital works, participatory works, or personal/archive-based material.

The project approaches digital intimacy critically and poetically. It does not aim to promote or moralize sexting, but to create a space of reflection on how intimacy is imagined, written, negotiated, and mediated through digital space.

Deadline for student contributions: August 31, 2026.

Please do not submit intimate or explicit material involving other people unless you have their clear consent!

Follow for more and feel free to contact us!

Email: Narrativesofdesire2026@gmail.com

Instagram: @narratives.of.desire