11 December 2021 gdc17

Seventeenth Giornata del Contemporaneo

On Saturday 11 December 2021, the Giornata del Contemporaneo returned — the major annual event, promoted by AMACI with the support of the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, dedicated to the art of our time and its public.

Armin Linke per la Diciassettesima Giornata del Contemporaneo, "Jurong Bird Park, Singapore", 1999 – 2021

For the seventeenth edition, on Saturday 11 December 2021, AMACI’s 24 museums and organisations such as museums, foundations, public and private institutions, galleries, associations, studios and artists’ spaces opened their spaces to the public free of charge to celebrate contemporary art through a multifaceted programme that involved not only the major cities but also smaller centres, which have always been very active. Through the Giornata del Contemporaneo, AMACI aims to strongly highlight the important role that the contemporary plays in the cultural, social and economic development of our country.

The seventeenth edition finally returned in person, while still keeping a hybrid format that allowed for a dual-track approach, encouraging participation through both online and offline offerings. The event’s guiding thread was the theme of the performative, referring not only to the performer’s bodily experience on stage but, above all, to the urgent need to rethink new dynamics of interaction with the public through the sharing of space. The theme of “the performative” was chosen for its ability to act as a catalyst and activator of relationships and actions that can generate new forms of public engagement and increase the museum’s social impact within its reference community. The member museums designed and proposed, in a coordinated way, activities linked to these themes for the Giornata del Contemporaneo.

Following the suspension of the event’s usual format in 2020, caused by the repercussions of the health emergency, the directors of the member museums decided once again to entrust an artist with creating the event’s guiding image, choosing Armin Linke (Milan, 1966) as the representative of this edition, symbolic of the restart. The project of involving an internationally renowned Italian artist in creating the guiding image of the Giornata del Contemporaneo thus resumed — a role that in previous years had been taken on 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 chosen for the Seventeenth Giornata del Contemporaneo, Jurong Bird Park, is a theatrical staging, a display of elements representing a concept of natural landscape. In this modernist architectural fiction, the lush, seemingly spontaneous nature that welcomes the multicoloured parrots is steeped in both natural and artificial elements, starting with the reinforced-concrete mushroom that mimics the welcoming wooden shelter for the birds featured in the photograph. With his unmistakable ability to capture the reality around us, Linke opens up a deep reflection on human actions and on heavily anthropised places such as Jurong Bird Park (Singapore), the largest bird park in the world, where Nature is bent to serve humankind and its unstoppable desire for appropriation.

This year too, the Giornata del Contemporaneo was extended abroad from Monday 6 to Saturday 11 December 2021 by the diplomatic-consular network of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, made up of Embassies, Consulates and Italian Cultural Institutes. In collaboration with MAECI’s Directorate-General for the Promotion of the Country System and thanks to the support of the MiC’s Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity, the participation of AMACI directors in events organised by the Farnesina’s overseas network and by contemporary-art-related bodies active in the relevant countries was encouraged.

In testimony to the event’s ever-growing significance and its important role within the national system, the Head of State, Sergio Mattarella, awarded the Giornata del Contemporaneo the Medal of the President of the Republic.