Manifesta 12 to Transform Palermo Through Social Contract and Urban Syncretism

Manifesta 12, led by director Hedwig Fijen and creative mediator Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, will not be a conventional biennial but a social contract with Palermo. Fijen, who has been advising Palermo since its 2013 bid for European Capital of Culture, emphasizes that the project aims to create new infrastructures and foster socio-cultural change from the grassroots. The biennial's headquarters in Piazza Magione, a historically contested area, will serve as an epicenter for a diffuse network of interventions. Pestellini Laparelli, an architect who has worked with OMA, Fondazione Prada, and the Venice Biennale, describes the approach as extracting a curatorial proposal from the city itself, rather than imposing one. The project will address migration, climate change, and tourism, using Palermo as a blueprint for a renewed Mediterranean identity. Artists have not yet been selected; the curatorial team will finalize themes between late April and early June 2017. Fijen notes that Manifesta 12 will leverage syncretism—evident in daily life, such as the Tamil community adopting Santa Rosalia—to reimagine exhibition formats and promote human rights. The biennial aims to create symbolic tools for revitalization, acknowledging its limited budget, and seeks to establish a new model for a broader Europe.