“Gibellina-Italian Capital of Contemporary Art 2026,” adds Andrea Cusumano, Artistic Director Gibellina 2026, "was born from the conviction that contemporary art is not only an expression of the present, but a practice of presence: a way of inhabiting places, building relationships and taking responsibility for the time we live in. Bring Me the Future is an invitation addressed to artists and citizens to confront the fractures of contemporaneity, transforming crises into opportunities for choice, care and change. Gibellina thus becomes an open laboratory, in which art is not called to represent the future, but to enact it, through shared processes capable of generating knowledge, participation and new centrality for territories. A project that asks artists to be present, to work in the places of everyday life and to contribute to building a beauty understood as a social task, leaving a cultural legacy that goes beyond the year of the title and continues to produce meaning over time."
The title of Italian Capital of Contemporary Art is awarded for the first time in Italy and gives Gibellina an unprecedented role in the national cultural scene. The city of Belìce, rebuilt after the 1968 earthquake through a process that saw art assume a central function in the redefinition of urban space and collective identity, now becomes the site of an extended reflection on the relationship between artistic production, community and territory. Portami il futuro ideally picks up the baton of the experience started by Ludovico Corrao, promoter of the cultural reconstruction of Gibellina first as mayor and then as president of the Orestiadi Foundation. The program intends to renew that approach, positioning contemporary art as a shared practice among artists, citizens and institutions, and as a tool for building social and civic relations. In this sense, the very notion of “capital” is reinterpreted not as a center of concentration, but as an open space of widespread cultural production.
The event is supported by the Sicilian Region, the Municipality of Gibellina, the Ludovico Corrao Museum of Contemporary Art and the Orestiadi Foundation. The artistic direction is by Andrea Cusumano, joined by co-curators Cristina Costanzo and Enzo Fiammetta and project coordinator Antonio Leone. The supporting curatorial committee consists of Antonella Corrao, Arianna Catania, Alfio Scuderi and Giuseppe Maiorana, while the Scientific Committee brings together Antonia Alampi, Achille Bonito Oliva, Marco Bazzini, Michele Cometa, Hedwig Fijen, ClaudioGulli, Teresa Macrì and Maurizio Oddo
The official opening ceremony is scheduled for Thursday, January 15, 2026, a date that coincides with the anniversary of the earthquake that struck Gibellina and the Belìce Valley in 1968. The choice of this day underscores the link between historical memory and contemporary planning, placing the launch of the program within a reflection on the past and its consequences in the development of the city. Over the course of the year, Gibellina and the municipalities of the Belìce Valley and the Libero Consorzio Comunale of Trapani will be traversed by an articulated system of exhibition projects conceived not only as tools for the preservation of memory, but as devices capable of reinterpreting the present starting from the traces left by contemporary art on the territory. The exhibitions will be accompanied by guided tours created by the students of Gibellina and Salemi, called upon to narrate the city and its artistic and architectural heritage, activating an intergenerational dialogue between places, works and communities.
The exhibition program includes video installations by Masbedo and Adrian Paci, who will inhabit the sculptural space of Pietro Consagra’s Theater. A dialogue between works by Carla Accardi, Letizia Battaglia, Renata Boero, Isabella Ducrot and Nanda Vigo will also offer a look at new generations of artists. A major exhibition dedicated to the Mediterranean is also planned, while the contemporary art collection of the Galvagno family, founder of Elenka, will offer a focus on established Sicilian artists. Collector Peppe Morra’s collection, on the other hand, will recount his path as a patron and cultural promoter. An installation by Parisian artist Philippe Berson, who chose Sicily as a place to live and work, will also be presented over the course of the 12 months. This will be accompanied by the project of prìsenti, processional drapes made by artists such as Pietro Consagra, Alighiero Boetti and Giulio Turcato. The exhibition Domestic Displacement will bring together works by Mona Hatoum, William Kentridge, Shirin Neshat, Anna Maria Maiolino, Amalia Pica, Regina José Galindo, Santiago Sierra, Zehra Doğan, María Magdalena Campos Pons, Holly Stevenson, Paolo Icaro, Olu Oguibe, Mustafa Sabbagh, and Akram Zaatari, relating poetics that reflect on displacement as an experience of decontextualization and new location.
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