ART CITY Bologna 2025: the city becomes a diffuse stage

From Thursday, Feb. 6 to Sunday, Feb. 16, 2025, the 13th edition of ART CITY Bologna returns, the event that has been a landmark for contemporary art lovers, citizens and tourists for years. Promoted by the City of Bologna and BolognaFiere, the event celebrates the creativity and richness of Bologna’s art scene with more than 270 events that will take place throughout the city and metropolitan area. Once again this year, ART CITY Bologna will be held in conjunction with Arte Fiera, the main fair dedicated to modern and contemporary art, which will open its doors from February 7 to 9, 2025, under the title Scena Italia. As usual, the initiative stands out for its ability to involve a wide audience, offering a program ranging from exhibitions to performances, passing through talks, installations and numerous events promoted by public and private institutions. The event, curated for the eighth consecutive year by Lorenzo Balbi, director of MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, offers a unique opportunity to discover new and unprecedented voices in contemporary art, but also to rediscover the history of Bologna through art. This edition, in fact, will have as its focus a special project that pays homage to the thousand-year history of Le Porte della Città.

The Gates of the City: an artistic journey that interweaves history and contemporaneity

ART CITY Bologna’s Special Program 2025 focuses on the city’s historic Gates, ten monumental gateways that for centuries have marked the boundary between Bologna’s inner and outer worlds. A circular path of works by Italian and international artists will intertwine with the history, culture, and social and urban changes that have shaped the city. Along the eight kilometers of avenues connecting the historic gates, the public will be able to discover the dialogue between past and present through the installations of contemporary artists.

Banca di Bologna, the main sponsor of ART CITY Bologna 2025, has a special connection with the city gates, having supported a campaign to restore these important monuments between 2007 and 2009. The Gates, originally twelve and now reduced to ten, are symbols of the city’s continuous change: witnesses to epic battles, crucial historical events, and moments of resistance and social transformation. Today, more than ever, they have become symbols of openness and change, evoking a transition to new perspectives. The scenario of new productions is conceived by eleven Italian and international artists and performers: Fatma Bucak, Francesco Cavaliere, Derek MF Di Fabio, Valentina Furian, Gabrielle Goliath, Judith Hopf, Franco Mazzucchelli, Susan Philipsz, Angelo Plessas, Andrea Romano, Dread Scott.

The artistic interventions and installations

The project starts at Porta Mascarella, where artist Angelo Plessas places the work Extropic Optimisms: Portal IV, a portal composed of luminous signs conveying messages of conciliation and hope. At Porta San Donato, Susan Philipsz’s sound sculpture Deep Water Pulse invokes the image of the sea and the abyss, evoking an atmosphere that stretches between the beating of the human heart and the mystery of the ocean depths. At Porta San Vitale, Judith Hopf presents Phone User 4, an ironic sculpture that explores the unconscious gestures related to the daily use of the telephone, while at Porta Maggiore, Franco Mazzucchelli proposes an inflatable pvc sculpture that interacts with the structure of the door, breaking down its monumentality.

Other installations touch on themes of great social and political relevance: at Porta Santo Stefano, Gabrielle Goliath presents Elegy, a video commemorating LGBTQIA+ people persecuted and killed in South Africa, while at Porta Castiglione, Fatma Bucak proposes a site-specific installation entitled Tremendous gap between you and me, which reflects on the possibility of rebirth after destruction. At Zaragoza Gate, Francesco Cavaliere enlivens the environment with the sculpture OTTO, double bend language!, which functions as a symbolic amplifier for the dissemination of thoughts and ideas. Dread Scott’s installation at Porta San Felice, entitled A Man Was Lynched by Police Yesterday, offers a reflection on discrimination and violence against the African American community, a theme that still resonates strongly in contemporary society. Finally, Valentina Furian presents the video Aaaaa at Porta Lame, a work that explores the darkness and depths of the earth, a symbol of the animal essence that belongs to every human being. Closing this cycle of artistic interventions is Derek MF Di Fabio’s performance BARK, which involves a group of queer people in a collective bicycle ride along the route of the Gates, symbolizing an ideal link between all the works.

The route and public enjoyment

To facilitate the enjoyment of this special program, ART CITY Bologna is offering a guided tour of the Gates of the City, which will take place during Saturday, Feb. 8, Sunday, Feb. 9, Saturday, Feb. 15 and Sunday, Feb. 16, aboard a bus that will take the public to discover the various artistic interventions. The tour, led by cultural mediators, will last about two and a half hours and will offer an engaging experience to learn in depth about the meaning of each work and the history behind Bologna’s doors. The initiative is organized in collaboration with Fondazione Bologna Welcome and City Red Bus to ensure a unique and immersive experience for all participants.

The institutional program

From February 6 to 9, 2025, theAcademy of Fine Arts of Bologna will host a new edition of ABABO Art Week, a review that involves faculty and students with exhibitions, meetings and installations spread throughout the city. Among the most anticipated events is the ARTalk CITY talk series (Feb. 5-8), which hosts international artists such as Fatma Bucak, Valentina Furian and Susan Philipsz, offering a space for discussion on the languages of contemporary art.

Inside the academy, the ABABO OPEN SHOW exhibition will open, showcasing student work, while another section will be dedicated to the finalists of the Young Art Award 2025, an award that showcases young emerging talent. Feb. 8 will also be dedicated to the memory of Alberto Garutti, with the laying of a commemorative plaque and a meeting to remember his contribution to public art.

There are also numerous events spread throughout the city, among others:

• At Palazzo Vizzani, Jason Hendrik Hansma presents In Our Real Life curated by Gabriele Tosi, an installation reflecting on climate change and global tidal waves.

• At the Women’s History Archive, Sabrina Mezzaqui exhibits her Hannah Arendt Notebooks, a visual reflection on the German thinker’s philosophy.

• Julia von Stietencron, with Chronotope 0. Lay out N.1, curated by Eleonora Frattarolo and with the scientific direction of Carlo Ventura, intervenes in the space of the Legislative Assembly of Emilia-Romagna, working on the relationship between memory and time.

• The Archiginnasio Municipal Library hosts Oscar Piattella. The Walls, a material investigation into the stratifications of time.

• At the Conservatory of Music Library, a meeting dedicated to the link between art and jazz through takes place Arthur Garfield Dove and Stuart Davis, curated by Luciano Scarpaci and the Library’s Scientific Committee.

• The Library of the Arts celebrates the 40th anniversary of the acquisition of Francesca Alinovi’s book collection with the exhibition Re-Beginning with Dada. The Books, Research, Ideas of Francesca Alinovi, focusing on her studies and publications curated by Pasquale Fameli and Federica Muzzarelli, with the collaboration of Katia Amaroli.

• At the Zeri Library, Flavio Favelli presents Nuova Mixage Up curated by Roberto Pinto, an installation composed of 216 bottles of historic liquor, the subject of a reflection on time and memory.

Statements

“ART CITY Bologna reaches its thirteenth edition, on the strength of the great results achieved in past years that have made the initiative an important reference point for our city of art,” says Matteo Lepore, Mayor of Bologna. “The event responds to the Municipality of Bologna’s goal of placing culture at the center of the territory through an alliance with the many public and private entities that adhere to the rich program of initiatives, drawing the attention of a wide and transversal audience.”

“We are very happy with the further enhancement and continuity of ART CITY Bologna,” comments Eva Degl’Innocenti, Director of the Bologna Civic Museums Sector, “of Arte Fiera and the artistic and scientific-cultural activities of Bologna ”City of Modern and Contemporary Art“ represented by the recent signing of the three-year memorandum of understanding, 2025-2027, between the Municipality of Bologna and BolognaFiere S.p.A. for the realization and promotion of Arte Fiera and the artistic-cultural projects and initiatives of ART CITY Bologna. The homage to the ten historical Gates of Bologna of the theme of this year’s edition will contribute even more to strengthen the strong link, dialogue and connection between museums, cultural heritage, artistic research and experimentation, contemporary art languages, galleries, socio-cultural, urban and territorial transformations of the city of Bologna between past, present and future.”

“BolognaFiere and Arte Fiera have been supporting ART CITY for years to offer our contribution to establish Bologna as a reference point for contemporary art in Italy,” stresses Gianpiero Calzolari, President of BolognaFiere. “The Bologna Art Week series of exhibitions and events, coordinated by the Modern and Contemporary Art Area of the Bologna Civic Museums Sector, and ART CITY White Night, with its packed program of events spread throughout the metropolitan city, will once again this year offer thousands of visitors the opportunity to experience modern art in an extraordinary urban context.”

“Banca di Bologna has always been committed to supporting initiatives that enhance the artistic and cultural heritage of the area and promote art in all its forms,” notes Alberto Ferrari, General Manager of Banca di Bologna. “The commitment that binds the Bank to the Monumental Gates of the city of Bologna goes back a long way. The first intervention project for the restoration and enhancement of these monumental complexes dates back to 2007. During the two-year period 2007-2009 the Bank supported the costs of restoration bringing the Gates to their former glory. Therefore, it is with particular pleasure and involvement that Banca di Bologna is preparing to support an initiative that aims to make the Gates the protagonists once again, in the context of a project designed to renew their image and redefine their history of use, continuing the collaboration with MAMbo - Museum of Modern Art of Bologna, as in recent years.”

“The 2025 edition is definitely the most ambitious and spectacular edition of ART CITY Bologna ever,” explains Lorenzo Balbi, Artistic Director of ART CITY Bologna 2025. “For more than ten days the historic city gates, the emblem of medieval Bologna and a visual, spatial and cultural reference point for anyone who has passed through and still passes through the city, will host the interventions of eleven contemporary Italian and international artists-some young others already established and well-known on the international art stage-who will exhibit works, forms and languages expressed through different media: drawing, sculpture, installation, video, sound. The Doors are symbols of a passage and a transformation, and the edition of ART CITY Bologna 2025 within them presents itself as a possible model of a project on art in public space, capable of opening and bringing to visitors familiar but inaccessible spaces, shared histories and suggestions never revealed that artists and female artists will be able to enhance with their interventions made for the occasion and conceived for these specific places. The public will be invited to take a circular route, with no predetermined beginning or end, an exceptional and unexpected journey through the city’s history and contemporary art. The project would not be possible without the indispensable support of Banca di Bologna, which believed in this unique undertaking from the very first moment and which I want to thank for its trust, commitment and enthusiasm.”

“The Gates of the City is not only a reflection on the monuments that dot our urban landscape and the stories they hold. It is an opportunity to reread the past to look at the present and its challenges,” adds Special Program curator Caterina Molteni. “The symbol of the door-one of the few in history that imposes itself not only as an image, but as an experience, as a ritual-allowed us to delve into the folds of our time, investigating the nature of a process, be it historical, social, cultural or cognitive. Memories of conflicts and revolutionary gestures, descents into the depths of the earth in search of a more authentic identity, devices capable of transmitting energies of change, psychomagical musical instruments: these are just some of the proposals that animate this edition. Monuments return to pulsate, to speak to us, to shout their voices.”

ART CITY Bologna 2025: the city becomes a diffuse stage

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