In 2024, the 12th edition of the event will take place, 20 years after its birth. Below, you can read an excerpt of the words of the artistic director of the Biennale Emiliano Galigani to learn more about the upcoming edition’s theme.

“Every edition of the Biennale is characterized – since the first edition in 2004 – by a theme, as a common thread. What we try to ask ourselves every time is what will be important in two years, in a political, personal, economic and social sense. War, the environment, mass movements, evolution or involution, speed, the search for other worlds, peace, the instability of economic and social progress, freedom and rights: these are some of the words that have led to broader reflections.

Here and now: tomorrow.
Today, living in the present, living here and now, has become a fundamental aspect of our existence. The here and now is the only moment we have to exist, grow, feel, love. The fact is that we often forget about it because we act mechanically and repetitively, we live at the mercy of time. The outside world, society, the system, constantly draw our attention (also thanks to technology, social networks, chats, social and political events that surround us), snatching it away from the here and now. Artistic expression is the synthesis between our self and external reality, art brings reality closer to our soul and our soul to reality. It is a window on tomorrow, on the infinite possibilities that the human mind has to travel beyond the boundaries of itself in search of new possibilities and new worlds to discover and build.

From a conceptual and aesthetic point of view, it allows you to make an analysis of the contemporary, its transience, the current political situation, but also to address the issue from an artistic point of view, analyzing forms of art and expression that are by their nature transitory, unrepeatable or perishable. The value of time, of the instant, of things that change over the years, months, days or minutes: here and now is a category of thought that is very relevant to the world we live in, to the acceleration of time that surrounds us, to events that are born and die in instants, without it being sometimes even possible to realize their existence. With tomorrow, the here and now is related to the category of the eternal, perhaps even the Divine. The coupling of the two concepts within the same sentence seems to be an oxymoron. What is transitory cannot be eternal. Inserted in the same sentence, the two concepts open up interpretative possibilities (can what is now remain forever? Will what we do now condition us forever?).”