Gibellina is a city that rebuilt itself together with artists, entrusting art with an active role in the civic process: not an aesthetic exercise or a symbolic gesture, but a concrete practice of relationship, responsibility, and presence.

The project grows out of this legacy and carries it forward into the present, conceiving contemporary art not only as the art of our time, but as an art of presence, capable of activating dialogue, proximity, and participation. The exhibitions, residencies, and projects that will unfold throughout 2026 are conceived as living devices, able to bring artists, communities, and places into relationship, restoring centrality to public space and to the collective dimension of cultural experience.

In this journey, the Mediterranean takes on the value of a metaphor and a political horizon: a space of exchange, conflict, and creation, but also a place in which to rethink the forms of coexistence and care. Likewise, territoriality is not understood as closure, but as the expression of a cultural polycentricity that rejects any logic of centralization and recognizes in every place a possible centrality of relationships.

Bring Me the Future is, finally, both a request and a shared commitment: to care for the time that came before us and for the time to come, recognizing in beauty not an abstract or decorative value, but a social and political task. A task that calls artists, institutions, and citizens to a common responsibility, so that Gibellina may continue to be a place where the future is not proclaimed, but built and practiced together, day after day.

Andrea Cusumano
Artistic Director of Gibellina, Italian Capital of Contemporary Art 2026