Seventeenth edition of Giornata del Contemporaneo
Saturday, December 11, 2021
Armin Linke per la Diciassettesima Giornata del Contemporaneo, Jurong Bird Park, Singapore, 1999 – 2021
The greatest annual event dedicated to the art of our time and its audience, the Giornata del Contemporaneo, is promoted by AMACI with the support of General Direction for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture.
For its seventeeth edition, held on Saturday, December 11 2021, the twenty-four AMACI museums and other realities such as foundations, public and private institutions, art galleries, associations, studios and artists’ workshops will open up their spaces to the public in order to celebrate contemporary art.
The seventeenth edition is finally back as an in-person event, maintaining a hybrid fruition format: it will provide a double track in order to encourage participation with both online and offline proposals. The common thread running through the initiative will be in the theme of the "performative", in reference not only to the experience of the performers' bodily presence on the stage, but especially to renegotiating a new presence with the audience through the sharing of space. The theme of the "performative" has been identified for its ability to be a catalyst and activator of relationships and actions that can generate new forms of public involvement and increase the social impact of the museum’ community. For the Giornata del Contemporaneo the associated museums will design and propose a coordinated range of activities around this theme.
After the suspension of the traditional format last year, caused by the repercussions of the healthcare emergency, the directors of the member museums decided once more to entrust the creation of the guiding image of the event to an artist, this time choosing Armin Linke (Milan, 1966) to represent this restarting edition.
The project therefore resumes with the involvement of an Italian artist of international fame in the conception of the Giornata del Contemporaneo’s guiding image, which over past editions has been created by Michelangelo Pistoletto (2006), Maurizio Cattelan (2007), Paola Pivi (2008), Luigi Ontani (2009), Stefano Arienti (2010), Giulio Paolini (2011), Francesco Vezzoli (2012), Marzia Migliora (2013), Adrian Paci (2014), Alfredo Pirri (2015), Emilio Isgrò (2016), Liliana Moro (2017), Marcello Maloberti (2018) and Eva Marisaldi (2019).
The image selected for the Seventeenth Giornata del Contemporaneo Jurong Bird Park is a theatrical staging, a display of elements which represent the concept of a natural landscape. In modernist architectural fiction, lush and apparently spontaneous nature, home to colorful parrots, features both natural and artificial elements, starting from the reinforced concrete mushroom which imitates a cozy wooden refuge for the birds in the photograph. With his unmistakable ability to latch onto surrounding reality, Linke opens a profound reflection on human actions and on heavily anthropized places as Jurong Bird Park (Singapore): the largest bird park in the world, where nature is bent to the service of man and his unstoppable drive towards appropriation.
With a multifaceted program involving not only major cities but also smaller ones, which have always played an active role in the event, on this single day, AMACI wishes to emphasize the key function that contemporary art plays in the cultural, social and economic development of our country.
Giornata del Contemporaneo - Italian Contemporary Art returns, and thanks to the collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the initiative will this year be extended beyond national borders joining forces with the MAECI foreign network. From Monday 6 to Saturday 11 December 2021, Italian embassies, consulates and Institutes of Culture will promote Italian creativity through a schedule of activities to be presented in a hybrid fruition format.
Contact Us
giornatadelcontemporaneo@amaci.org
