SPEAK

THE ARTWORK AS A VOICE

20.06.2025

There is a moment, just before words take shape, when something presses to emerge. A silent tension searching for form, sound, image. That is where the artwork is born: when the gesture becomes expression, when the mark is charged with voice, when silence breaks and the artist speaks – even without saying a word.

SPEAK – The Artwork as Voice is an international group exhibition hosted by M.A.D.S. Art Gallery, gathering the traces of these urgencies. These are not works to simply be seen – they ask to be heard. Because each artist here has chosen art not as ornament, but as necessity. To speak, to shout, to confess. To give space to what has never been given space before.

In an era where communication is omnipresent yet increasingly hollow, these artists respond with radical, personal, and truthful languages. Some draw from autobiography, turning intimate wounds into powerful images. Others bring forward the voices of forgotten communities, of unacknowledged histories, of vanishing languages. Some build silent works, full of material and absence, where expression lies in mute presence. Others speak through the body, through performance, through sound – seeking a direct, physical, emotional connection with the viewer. The audience is not a passive observer, but a witness. To broken voices, fragile voices, insistent voices, powerful voices. Every artwork is a declaration, an act of courage, an open question.

SPEAK does not seek definitive answers, but authentic relationships. It creates dialogue between distant voices, different cultures, intimate experiences and collective memories. And it does so at a time when to speak – to truly speak – is a revolutionary act. When expressing oneself outside imposed filters and codes is already a form of resistance.

With SPEAK – The Artwork as Voice, M.A.D.S. Art Gallery aims to restore the artwork’s most profound power: to be language, to be voice. A form through which human beings become legible to the world – and to each other. Every piece is a presence that has chosen to be heard. The task of those who enter? To stop. To listen. To welcome. Perhaps, even to respond.

Concept by Matilde Della Pina Senior Art Curator