Etnia Eyewear Culture, the cultural arm of Etnia Barcelona, has launched the Etnia House of Arts residency program in Venice. Housed in the restored Chiesa dell’Abbazia della Misericordia, the contemporary art space invites artists to create site-specific works during two-week residencies, using eyeglasses as a conceptual starting point to explore vision, identity, and representation. The first two residents, Conxi Sane and Greta Pllana, have already produced interventions—Membrane and The Shape I Kept—that expand the symbolic possibilities of the object.
The program matters because it reactivates a historic Venetian church as a living studio and exhibition space, blending production with public experience. By centering the residency on a commercial product—eyeglasses—it challenges traditional boundaries between art, commerce, and everyday objects, while fostering international artistic exchange in a city already saturated with cultural tourism. The initiative also underscores a growing trend of eyewear brands investing in contemporary art patronage.