SÈTE PALERMO / BAM – BIENNIAL ARCHIPELAGO MEDITERRANEAN

Press release
October 2022

Shared territories

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From 12 to 18 September 2022 in Sète and Montpellier.
From 18 to 22 October 2022 in Palermo.
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After the exchange, unique of its kind, organized between the artists of Sète and those of Los Angeles in 2019, the SLA association organizes the second edition of its contemporary art festival with Palermo.
14 Sicilian artists will be in Sète and Montpellier from 12 to 18 September. 17 artists from Sète and the region will be in Palermo from 18 to 22 October, in collaboration with BAM – Biennale Arcipelago Mediterraneo.
Palermitan artists: Giuliana Barbano, Emanuela Barilozzi Caruso, Barbara Cammarata, Ruby Cicero, Andrea Cusumano, Gandolfo Gabriele David, DimoraOz, Cécile Donato Soupama, Daniela Nancy Granata, Marco Petrigno, Andrea Kantos, Alessandro Librio, Ignazio Mortellaro, Rossella Poidomani, Linda Randazzo , Maria Donata D’Urso.
Artists from Sète and Montpellier: Abdelkader Benchamma, Aldo Biascamano, Armelle Caron, André Cervera, Lise Chevalier, Jean Denant, Daniel Dezeuze, Émilie Dezeuze, François Dezeuze, Gilles-Marie Dupuy, Ève Laroche-Joubert, Suzy Lelièvre, Barbara Massart et Nicolas Clément, Marion Mounic, Mickey Mouse.

“United by a passion for art and for convivial and collegial projects, we organize a contemporary art festival every two years between Sète and another port city. The choice of Palermo, with its tangle of alleyways similar to those of Sète, the dynamism of its art scene and the Mediterranean always on the horizon, came naturally”. 

The festival staff.

SLA is a non-profit cultural association, founded in Sète in January 2018 by Sophie Dulin, Pauline Boyé and Marie Taillan, convinced that art and artists contribute to transforming the quality of life. SLA intends to organize every two years an exchange between Sète and other port cities around the world, thanks to a free contemporary art festival intended for the general public. SLA invites local authorities, museums and companies to collaborate between the public and private sectors to give life to projects with a strong cultural, creative and social impact.

The SLA program: for an exchange of ideas and know-how

– Defend artists by accompanying them in their most unexpected, daring and poetic adventures.
– Support the most diverse artistic practices, from visual arts to culinary arts, from performance to literature, from music to video, on a local and international scale.
– Reach an ever wider audience thanks to a program of multidisciplinary events: exhibitions, shows, concerts, film screenings, readings, conferences, debates.
– Confront and establish a dialogue between different cultures and contemporary art forms, without neglecting popular festivals, myths, legends and local traditions.

Guest curator: Federica Fruttero

Exhibition curator, art consultant, specialist in modern and contemporary prints (DU Paris Panthéon-Assas), Federica Fruttero graduated from the University of Turin and the École du Louvre. Called to Paris in 1992 by Piero Crommelynck, engraver of Pablo Picasso and many 20th century artists, she was his assistant until 2001, the year in which he passed away, and until 2020 she followed the print collection for loans and retention. Among other professional experiences, for 10 years you were in charge of exhibitions at the Maillol and Jacquemart-André museums in Paris.
“Conceived as a bridge between two shores of the Mediterranean, between two thriving commercial ports and between two similar cultures, Sète-Palermo presents around thirty French and Italian artists who share their artistic practices, who have in common the desire and curiosity explore nature, to transmit tradition and culture in their most diverse forms, to communicate the beauty and poetry of the Earth to the public. Because the Mare Nostrum, instead of separating us, continues to build very strong ties despite the distance.”

Sète-Palermo: meeting BAM
BAM – The Mediterranean Archipelago Biennale is an international festival of visual arts, theater and entertainment promoted by the MeNO Association and the Mario Merz Foundation, with the artistic direction of Andrea Cusumano. After the commitment of Manifesta and Palermo Italian Capital of Culture 2018, MeNO imagines artistic projects that revolve around the Mediterranean basin. From 23 September 2022 to January 2023 MeNO is organizing a new edition of BAM, a biennial of contemporary art in the historic places of the city.

The union between MeNO and SLA immediately gave rise to a common artistic project: the programming of Sète-Palermo as part of BAM 2022, under the patronage of the Municipality of Palermo.

The exhibition spaces

Appointment à Sète at the Chapelle du Quartier Haut, at the Center régional d’art contemporain (CRAC), at the Musée international des arts modestes (MIAM), at the École des Beaux-Arts, at the Plage de la Ola, at the Zoom gallery, at the Pop galerie, the Cyclo and the l’Echappée Belle bookshop. Appointment in Montpellier at the Hôtel des Collections (MO.CO) and at the Botanical Garden. Appointment in Palermo at Palazzo Branciforte-Fondazione Sicilia, Palazzo Butera, at the Cantieri alla Zisa, at the Institut Français, at the Sant’Elia Foundation, at the La Stanza di Carta bookshop, at the church of Sant’Euno, spaces proposed by the MeNo association and from our Palermo partners.

Preparation by Mr & Mr

The installations in Sète and Palermo have been entrusted to the architect Alexis Lautier and the designer Pierre Talagrand, founders of the Mr & Mr studio. Their interventions are works in progress whose leitmotif is: “to build projects starting from a crazy idea”. Mr & Mr transpose the functionality of the object into an imaginary world that does not forget the needs of everyday life.

Print album

For each new edition of the festival, SLA offers an album of numbered and signed prints, in the best tradition of art books, part of a “series” of which there are currently 3 albums: Sète, Los Angeles and Sète-Palermo. Each print, woodcut (Atelier DPJ) or silkscreen (AtelierAnagraphis) is numbered and signed, with a circulation of 100 copies. The album was bound by the Atelier Chien de Mer. The album of 25 original prints of the Sète-Palermo festival is the first collective work of the artists who participated and helps to financially support the festival.

The founders of SLA

Sophie Dulin, President. You founded the l’Echappée Belle bookshop in Sète.
Pauline Boyé, Treasurer. Graduated in economics and finance, she is a garden architect and in her
spare time she hunts for plants for her herbariums.
Marie Taillan, Editorial Manager. An art historian, you are responsible for the editions of
the Design Museum (Mudac) in Lausanne.
Anne Boyé, artistic consultant. Stylist, president of the Friends of the Musée international des
arts modestes (MIAM) of Sète.

“In addition to the elective affinities and friendship that binds its members, the fulcrum of the event, SLA is an opportunity to investigate cultural specificities in the global era”. Paul Ardenne, Art