Gibellina gets Italy's first open-air, site-specific photography festival

From July 30 to Aug. 29, 2021, the first open-air, site-specific photography and visual arts festival in Italy, Images Gibellina, will be held in the Sicilian town of Gibellina (Trapani), featuring large-scale photographic installations, outdoor exhibitions, talks and screenings in one of the world’s largest “open-air” contemporary art museums. The festival aims to be an urban laboratory involving artists and the territory to create a temporary city-museum, accessible to all and free of charge.

Organized and produced by the cultural association On Image and the Swiss biennial Images Vevey, promoted and supported by the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, the Municipality of Gibellina and the Orestiadi Foundation, and under the direction of Arianna Catania and Stefano Stoll, Images Gibellina returns for its 3rd edition, experimenting with ever new forms of exhibition that place urban space at the center. In collaboration with MAXXI-Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, the Swiss Institute (Rome), Pro Helvetia, and the Embassy of Germany.

Among the artists involved are Bruce Gilden, Stephen Gill, Maurizio Galimberti, Batia Suter, Francesco Jodice, Riverboom, Fang Wen, Simona Ghizzoni, Massimo Siragusa, Jun Ahn, Robert Pufleb & Nadine Schlieper, Hayahisa Tomiyasu, Giulia Piermarini/ Edoardo De Lille, Cécile Hummel.

Images Gibellina will make the Belìce town one of the most popular destinations among photography enthusiasts from all over the world, animating the city of art with thirty-one exhibitions and a rich program of events for the three opening days (July 30 to August 1) with talks, meetings, screenings, guided tours, workshops.

It will open on Friday, July 30, with a double tribute to the great Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri (Scandiano 1943 - Roncocesi 1992), in collaboration with MAXXI - National Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome and Archivio Eredi Ghirri, and with the participation of two authors from different generations, Mario Cresci and Giorgio Di Noto.

At Palazzo di Lorenzo at 9 p.m., Margherita Guccione, director of MAXXI Architettura, and Mario Cresci, a visual artist linked to Luigi Ghirri from his earliest projects, will open the evening with a projection of photographs from the Luigi Ghirri Lotus International Fund, acquired this year by MAXXI. The nocturnal and lyrical atmospheres of Ljubljana, recounted by Ghirri in a vast project, as well as landscapes from the series Italian Landscape, will resonate in the Sicilian night.

We will then move on to the Chiesa Madre of Gibellina, where the immense white sphere designed by Ludovico Quaroni in 1972 will host a video mapping featuring the photographs of Luigi Ghirri’sAtlante (1973), a key project in the history of contemporary Italian photography, which will be presented in a new form: a spectacular projection, curated by Giorgio Di Noto with the voice of Ascanio Celestini.

Also in this vein is Swiss-Dutch artist Batia Suter (Bülach, 1967), who will next present her iconic Radial Grammar, a complex, intriguing and multifaceted project in the form of a film made for large-scale loop viewing on the monumental apse of the Mother Church. An experiment in hybridization between art and urban architecture with alienating effects.

Visits to the exhibitions by Vincent Jendly, Massimo Siragusa and Simona Ghizzoni will then open, accompanied by the artists themselves.

The Images Gibellina program also includes a visit to Alberto Burri’s Grande Cretto: on Saturday, July 31, there will be an opportunity to visit one of the world’s largest works of land art.

On the same day, the artists Giulia Piermartiri and Edoardo Delille, Carla Sutera Sardo, Roselena Ramistella, Jun Ahn, Stefano De Luigi and Michela Battaglia, Dominique Teufen and Cécile Hummel will lead guided tours of the exhibitions set up at the Botanical Garden and the Consagra Theater. It will close with a party at Palazzo di Lorenzo and screenings of the winners of the Call promoted by Images Gibellina, and the network of partners: Alina Frieske, winner of the Call for an open installation; Oskar Alvarado, Nicola Bertasi, Kristina Borinskaya, Chiara Ernandes, Kata Geibl, Elena Helfrecht, Uma Kinoshita, Pietro Lo Casto, Rachele Maistrello, Camillo Pasquarelli, Michele Sibiloni, Daniel Stier, Angelo Vignali, Cristiano Volk, and Martina Zanin.

On Aug. 1, the tour among the sites of Gibellina will be completed with guided tours of the Orestiadi Foundation and the exhibitions of Alina Frieske/Twenty14, Riverboom, Mimì Mollica, Nicola Lo Calzo, Olga Cafiero and Robert Pufleb, with the same artists.

Among the big names in contemporary Italian photography at the festival will be Maurizio Galimberti, who will present at the Gibellina Molteplice festival, his unpublished work made in 2020.

Photography will also meet other languages: there will be a traveling performance by André Kuenzy (Switzerland, 1965), the creator and avatar of The Blue Man, the mute mime with the eye-machine, who provokes unknown passers-by, capturing their sometimes curious, sometimes frightened, but never indifferent reactions.

Here is the full program https://www.imagesgibellina.it/programma-2021

Ph.Credit Camilla Marinelli

Gibellina gets Italy's first open-air, site-specific photography festival

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