Palermo. Revealed the places and protagonists of Manifesta 12

Manifesta 12 Palermo opens to the public on 16 June 2018. It has just announced the name of ten participants and five new key venues. For some months now, the nomadic biennial of contemporary art and culture has been putting down roots in the city, with public encounters and presentations. The most attentive have even been able to guess the artists who will be featured at the event.

These sites join the Teatro Garibaldi, the Botanical Gardens, Piazza Magione, the church of SS. Euno e Giuliano and Palazzo Butera, presented already last November. They are the central Palazzo Forcella De Seta, Palazzo Ajutamicristo and Palazzo Costantino and the peripheral Zen – a working-class housing estate notorious for crime – and Pizzo Sella, with a fair title to being the paradigm of the Incompiuto Siciliano – public works begun and never completed.

Among the ten artists announced are: the French landscape designer and philosopher Gilles Clément, whose book The Planetary Garden is the inspiration for the whole event, with the Coloco office cultivating community gardens in the Zen quarter; the young London-based collective Cooking Sections active in art and architecture, investigating the systems of dry irrigation in agriculture; the artist and activator Marinella Senatore, who conceives an urban procession on the opening day; Uriel Orlow with a video installation at Palazzo Butera focused on the value of memory and the evocative power of botany. And then: Maria Thereza Alves, Jelili Atiku, John Gerrard, Khalil Rabah and Rotor.
In all, Manifesta 12 Palermo will comprise over 30 new works, public installations, performances and urban interventions and ramify into more than 15 iconic venues in Palermo.