Operæ: Independent Design Fair
A PROJECT BY BOLD S.R.L
The eighth edition of Operæ gathers the public and the experts around projects focused on materials as well as on processes and craft techniques. The fair suggests a landscape inhabited by objects conveying new values – whether economic, social, productive or relational – that arise from the intersection among craft skills and digital knowledge, local practices and global needs, specialised competences and collective narratives.
With its two sections – respectively dedicated to designers and contemporary design galleries – the fair offers the opportunity of discovering new products, taking note of the emerging phenomena, following the evolution of the market, getting in touch with the protagonists of the process as well as reflecting on those aspects that the design industry touches.
Operæ engages professionals of the industry and opens to design enthusiasts, by presenting a programme of collateral events alongside the exhibition to trigger a constructive dialogue and stimulate curiosity. Talks and workshops, the project Piemonte Handmade and a special project reinvented each year investigate together different specific aspects of the independent production and collectable design.
Over time Operæ has become an incubator of stories: it highlights experimental, innovative and multidisciplinary approaches and it allows the exhibitors to sell their products and the visitors to buy pieces that are unique or produced in limited editions.
Operæ chooses Alice Stori Liechtenstein, founder of the Schloss Hollenegg for Design, as curator of the 2017 edition, who has identified the theme Why Design as the interpretative lens for looking at the works on display.
Operæ took place from the 3rd to the 5th November 2017 at its new venue at Lingotto Fiere, which already hosts Artissima – International Fair of Contemporary Art and Club to Club – International Festival of Avant-garde and Pop, becoming a contemporary languages hub in the framework of the most important Italian event dedicated to the contemporary, “Contemporary Art Torino”.