La Rada – Spazio per l’arte contemporanea is celebrating thirty years of activity with an exhibition and performance project at Spazio ELLE, Locarno.

La Rada therefore presents LA PELLE DELLA BISCIA, the final event in the annual programme LÌ DOVE NON SIAMO, a project that brings to a close the nomadic journey undertaken in 2026 and celebrates the association’s thirtieth anniversary. The event will take place at Spazio ELLE in Locarno and will bring together artists who have been part of La Rada’s history alongside new generations from the contemporary scene, through a site-specific exhibition, performances, sound installations and opportunities for dialogue.

Founded in Locarno in 1996 by Tina Stolz, La Rada is one of the longest-standing independent organisations dedicated to contemporary art in Italian-speaking Switzerland. Over thirty years of activity, it has promoted the work of hundreds of artists, supporting both emerging and established practices and building a network of relationships that fosters dialogue between the local area and the national and international scenes. Its programme has always prioritised experimentation, interdisciplinary exchange and the building of cultural communities, establishing itself as a key reference point for contemporary artistic research.

The year 2026 marks a moment of profound transformation for the association. After more than a decade at its premises in Via alla Morettina, La Rada has chosen to embark on a new phase in its history, relinquishing a permanent space in order to develop a nomadic programme. LÌ DOVE NON SIAMO stems precisely from this state of transition, transforming the absence of a permanent venue into an opportunity to forge new collaborations, explore different locations and rethink the very meaning of the exhibition space.

As Georges Perec writes, ‘space is a doubt, something to be identified, designated, conquered’. Embracing this perspective, La Rada adopts transition as a working method: every place it passes through becomes a mechanism capable of generating new relationships between art, the local area and the community.

It is within this framework that LA PELLE DELLA BISCIA is situated, a project that does not seek to celebrate the past through a retrospective, but rather to transform the thirtieth anniversary into a moment of collective action and reflection on the future.

The title evokes the shedding of a snake’s skin as a metaphor for transformation: changing one’s skin without losing one’s identity. Thus, over the course of the four artistic directorships that have succeeded one another over the years, La Rada has been able to continually renew itself, adapting to changes in the cultural context without renouncing its commitment to research, experimentation and the support of contemporary artistic practices.

The exhibition is conceived as a site-specific project for the ELLE spaces. Archival materials, documents, photographs and testimonies engage in dialogue with new artistic works, installations and performative interventions, constructing a narrative that weaves together memory and the present. Rather than reconstructing a history, the project connects different experiences, languages and generations, questioning its role within the context of independent spaces and in the building of cultural communities.

LA PELLE DELLA BISCIA invites the public to rethink the history of La Rada not as a concluded journey, but as a constantly evolving organism, in which the past represents a resource from which to imagine new forms of research, collaboration and experimentation.

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Entry

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LA PELLE DELLA BISCIA is a project hosted by Spazio ELLE in Locarno