Alessandro Stillo

The 12th Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean celebrated its twentieth anniversary in Naples. The 1st edition was in 1985, with its debut in Barcelona, following "Tendencias - Prologue to the Biennial" in 1984. Barcelona would also host the 3rd edition in 1987....

Stefano Cristante

In a hypothetical history of human inventions, the creation of cultural events has its own little-but less and less ephemeral-position. Human knowledge has had to face up to the challenges of techniques and machines, but also devoted growing parts of its own work to the so-called immaterial sphere. ...

1985. The First Experience
Enric Truñó
City Councillor for Youth and Sports (1979-91)
Municipality of Barcelona

The Biennial of the Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean was born from a double initiative: one of the Municipality of Barcelona through its Área de Juventud and one of the Italian Association ARCI Kids....

Demetrius Salpistis
Deputy Mayor for Culture, Youth and Sports
Head of the Organizing Committee of the Municipality of Thessaloniki for the Biennial

On November 26, 1986, a few days after the end of the events of the 2nd Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean, Alexis Dermetzoglou, renowned film critic and sensitive observer of the city's cultural life, wrote the following in our city's daily newspaper: "Our opinion, as well as the opinion of many people working at the Biennial, of many young people and artists that we interviewed, and especially of many children from Thessaloniki is that, thankfully, from now on, things will never be the same....

Andreu Solsona
Director Barcelona

Looking back, everything was "young" in the eighties: Spanish democracy and the youth policy of the Barcelona City Council even more so. In 1985, the year of the first Biennial, Barcelona was the host city of International Youth Year, and that was also the year the city approved the Youth Project. A few months later, the "Transformers, a Shop Window of Youth Culture" facility was officially opened as a venue for exhibiting the work of young artists. Everything was new. Even we were young....

Mauro Felicori
Director, Bologna Biennial

The creation of the Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean grew from a good deal of successful intuition and the credit for this should go to Stefano Cristante, Alessandro Stillo and to Vincenzo Striano's ARCI Kids....

Patrick Ciercoles
Director, Marseilles Biennial

It was in Bologna in December 1988 that it first became apparent that Marseilles might host the 5th Biennial. The political situation in the town had been changing since the death of Gaston Defferre who had led the City Council for the past thirty years. A new dynamic organization of the cultural and artistic life of the city was coming into being. After thoroughly analyzing weaknesses, needs and driving forces, listening to the artists and everyone concerned, the City Council established new conditions for the development of cultural activities....

José Garnería
Director, Valencia Biennial

Remembering the Biennial of Valencia is impossible without looking back in time and remembering a few things. The event was organized by the City Council for Youth and with two different municipal legislatures, begun with the Councillor Manuel Mata and celebrated with the Councillor José Rafael García-Fuster y González-Alegre. It achieved having His Royal Highness the Prince Don Felipe de Borbón, heir to the Spanish throne, as Honorary President of the Organizing Committee of the Biennial, as proven by the photo in the catalogue he himself dedicated to all the young artists....

Jorge Barreto Xavier
Director, Lisbon Biennial

The Lisbon Biennial, in 1994, corresponded to a critical moment of an innovative project. In 1985, year of the first Biennial, there was no such thing as an initiative that dared to put together at the same time, in the same city, the artistic expressions which, since its inception, had marked the event-Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Image and New Media Arts, Applied Arts, Literature, Architecture. ...

The Days of the Anchovy
Luigi Ratclif
Director, Turin Biennial

Everyone remembers it as the Biennial of the Anchovy.
In the spring of 1997 Turin, a city with no sea, chose the fish as a symbol for the eighth edition of the Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean....

Luca Bergamo
Director, Rome Biennial

Chronicle of a Long-Lasting Attempt On May 29, 1999, the Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean opens in Rome. More than 50,000 square meters of the ex-Mattatoio of Testaccio, designed by Herzog at the beginning of the century to "industrialize" the slaughter of livestock, came back to life after almost twenty years of neglect....

Chaos and Communication
Ibrahim Spahic
Director, Sarajevo Biennial

The tenth jubilee Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean was held in Sarajevo, in the summer of 2001. The project was presented for the first time in 1994 during the seventh edition of the Biennial in Lisbon, at the meeting of the International Committee of the Biennial....

Vasso Kollia
Secretary General of Youth

Athens: A city where history meets innovation; where classical perfection has successfully managed to retain its position amidst modern and new forms of cultural and artistic expression; where the spirit of our world-renowned classical architects, sculptors, writers, philosophers and politicians is still very much alive, having successfully been blended with contemporary life and progress....

The Coexistence of Differences
Achille Bonito Oliva
President Scientific Commettee, Naples Biennial

The 12th Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean finds its expositive theater in the city of Naples, and in particular in Castel Sant'Elmo, that becomes then the transnational, multimedia and multicultural Citadel of Creativity....