Manifesta, the nomadic European biennial, has appointed four ‘creative mediators’ to work with the local communities of Palermo, which is set to host the next edition of the biennial in 2018. The team will include: Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, a partner at the Rotterdam-based Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) who joined the Manifesta team in November 2016, Swiss contemporary art curator Mirjam Varadinis, Spanish architect, artist and scholar Andrés Jaque and Dutch filmmaker and journalist Bregtje van der Haak. They will together seek to highlight the city’s perspective on migration, climate change, heritage, and the current state of Europe through extensive research on the architectural, urban, economic, social, and cultural fabric of the city. Their findings will be publicly shared in the spring, followed by the presentation of their plans for the biennial in the summer. ‘Our nomadic nature, moving from one city to another, requires a far more specific strategy to unlock cities as a way of preparing the canvas on which a painter can later start working,’ Hedwig Fijen, director of Manifesta said.
3 March 2017
