Resistance, creation, reciprocity—a three-month conference

May 6–July 21, 2022

Villa Romana
Via Senese, 68
50124 Firenze FI
Italy

MANIFESTIAMO is a collective format including installations, workshops, round tables, films and talks by more than 70 artists and researchers addressing issues of artistic practice and its current conditions over the course of three months. It is an open format that—following the Scuola Popolare in the summers of 2020 and 2021—shuns hierarchies and strategies of dominance, proposing institutional work as a collaborative process.

Since its beginnings, Villa Romana has been a space devoted to artistic thought and action, generating resonant spaces. A ‘protected’ space of this kind raises questions: who is protecting whom from what? Which space is allocated to art and from which is art excluded and separated? Is it possible to imagine an institutional practice that—in both its inner structure and its public work—does not aim for distance, consumption and canonisation, but seeks alliances that welcome all languages and speechlessness, all bodies and inadequacies? That creates or simply uses spaces to learn from and with each other, to exchange, to listen?

MANIFESTIAMO invites you to events with different thematic focuses every week from May to July. Participants are former Villa Romana fellows, artist-members of the Villa Romana Association, artists and collaborators from our neighbourhoods, researchers and artists invited to specific panels, as well as the HKW in Berlin and ADCF as collaborating partners.

We want to use the house and garden in the warm months for a multitude of encounters and experiences. We want to express and reflect the need for change.

Manifestare signifies that through the hands (mani) something becomes visible and audible.

You are all invited to be part of it! —Angelika Stepken, Luca Puri, Davood Madadpoor

Participating artists/groups: Giorgio Griffa, Viron Erol Vert, Heide Hinrichs, Christian Offman, Raziel Perin, Kelly Costigliolo, Ismael Lo, Jermay Michael Gabriel Cappelin, Justin Randolph Thompson, Andrea d’Amore, Qalqalah, Platform Harakat, Dar Jacir, KAYFA, THE TELOS SOCIETY, Le 18/QANAT, Broken Archive, Thomas Kilpper, Michael Baers, Bassel El Saadi, Leonora Bisagno & Bruno Baltzer, Cindy Coutant, Akim Pasquet, Estelle Benazet Heugenhauser, Helen Ibry, Jacopo Rasmi, Paca Rimbau Hernàndez, Farkhondeh Shahroudi, Yorgos Sapountzis, Nina Fischer & Maroan El Sani, Juan Pablo Macías, Franco Buncuga, Giacomo Zaganelli, Kinkaleri, Giovanni Cioni, Anike Joyce Sadiq, Andrea Scrima, Simone Frangi, Alessandra Ferrini, Lucrezia Cipitelli, Autumn Knight, Sophie Reinhold, Mario Rizzi, Nine Budde, Charlotte Brandi, Jacopo Miliani, CampoBase, Fide Dayo, Vera-Simone Schulz, Judith Raum, Nico Joana Weber, Eva Sauer, Antje Majewski, Eleni Kamma, Esper Postma, muSa Michelle Mattiuzzi, Neda Saeedi, Vyjayanthi V. Rao, Hannah Baader, Costanza Caraffa, Ronny Heiremans & Katleen Vermeir, Jeremiah Day, William Wells, Ana Texeira Pinto, Kerstin Stakemeier, Daniel Baker, Jörg Heiser, ART WORKERS ITALIA, CUICUOCUA, The Arab Puppet Theatre Foundation, Felicità Marcelli, Alessandra Tempesti and others. 

All events are free of charge. During the events Villa Romana is open from 4pm to midnight, on all other days the exhibition rooms are open Tuesday to Friday from 2 to 6pm.