“Culture is seriously harmful to ignorance”: the Artist’s Book Biennale in Naples goes pocket-sized
Pocket Compact Mini Book Edition takes place at Lineadarte Officina Creativa. Featuring over 90 artists from five continents, the exhibition runs.
There is a warning usually found on cigarette packs that Lineadarte Officina Creativa has borrowed and rewritten in its own style: “Culture is seriously harmful to ignorance.” This serves as both the title and the manifesto for the new edition of the Artist’s Book Biennale. On Friday, September 25, at 6:00 PM, the event opens the doors of its historic venue at Via San Paolo 31—in the heart of the ancient city center—for the launch of the Pocket Compact Mini Book Edition.
This is no ordinary edition. After eighteen years of large-scale formats and artworks that often spanned entire walls, the Biennale—conceived and curated by Giovanna Donnarumma and Gennaro Ippolito—is now designed to fit in a pocket. Literally: the exhibition brings together mail art, fanzines, unique books, book-objects, silent books, visual poetry, e-books, artist’s notebooks, and artist’s boxes, all created to sit in the palm of a hand rather than behind a display case. It is an exercise in subtraction that, the curators explain, takes nothing away from the language of the artist’s book; instead, it compels the medium to express everything within a more limited space. Over 90 artists from five continents—including Italy, Brazil, Spain, the United States, Ireland, Hungary, France, and Poland—answered the call, alongside a group of young creators: students from class 3C at the Enzo Rossi Art High School in Rome. Coordinated by teacher Cristiana Maria Pompei, they are showcasing their first foray into the pocket-sized format.
The Pocket Compact Mini Book Edition is not an isolated event in the Biennale’s journey, but a stepping stone toward its eighth edition, scheduled for 2027. It serves as a small-scale laboratory to test the viability of a specific medium—the artist’s book—which has always found a home at Lineadarte, a place where artistic research, craftsmanship, and experimentation converge.
