At both European and Italian level, migration policies are focused on a security-based approach which, by treating migration as a matter of public order rather than as a phenomenon connected to economic and social dynamics, is aimed at countering it even before seeking to understand it. As a result, the significant demographic and economic opportunities offered by migration are pushed into the background, or even denied altogether. The need to find new and more effective tools to narrate and explain migration can therefore no longer be considered merely a cultural or humanitarian issue. Rather, it appears as a crucial question for a prosperous and peaceful future for the European continent. Recognising this need, over the past ten years Fondazione Città della Pace has sought to disseminate, both in schools and through public initiatives, data collected and processed in official studies and reports by ISTAT, Eurostat, the UN agencies UNHCR and IOM, as well as by the IMF, the OECD, Italian and international universities, and independent and authoritative non-governmental organisations. However, from the very beginning of the campaign it became clear that simply presenting and highlighting factual data was not enough, and that a more effective interpretative key was needed in order to bring young people closer to an understanding of the migration phenomenon. How can we move beyond the dominant narrative, based instead on a supposed “emergency” caused by an unlikely “invasion”, repeated almost obsessively across communication channels and political debate? Contemporary art has proved to be an effective tool for achieving this objective. Public art in particular makes it possible to develop a new way of narrating the deeper causes of migration: climate change, growing inequalities, and human rights. Over the years, we have carried out a number of experiments involving artists, refugees hosted within SAI programmes, and members of the host communities in artistic initiatives. These have created small social incubators capable of bringing participants into dialogue with the context of reception, while providing tools for building constructive exchange within contemporary society, in order to understand and make explicit the causes of migration.

The project

As part of the integration activities of the SAI project of the Province of Potenza, the project 3500 cm², conceived and developed by curator and art critic Lorenzo Benedetti, is proposed. This project was created to move art outside its conventional contexts and make it available in a direct, accessible and shared form. The project involves the production of two new posters by contemporary artists, specifically Giovanni Giaretta and the duo Claire Fontaine, conceived as tools for cultural dissemination and public access to contemporary art, as well as to the themes of peace and sustainability. Rather than a traditional exhibition, the initiative takes the form of a public presentation of two new editions that the public will be able to collect free of charge, taking an artwork with them and allowing it to enter the spaces of everyday life. In this case, the free distribution of posters produced by artists on the theme of peace takes on a particular meaning, as it is part of the awareness-raising activities of the SAI reception project of the Province of Potenza and of the initiatives promoted by Città della Pace, an organisation working on issues of reception, rights, inclusion and collective responsibility. The Foundation links the idea of peace to concrete practices of respect for human rights, the overcoming of inequalities, and the construction of more open and supportive communities. The presence of Giovanni Giaretta and Claire Fontaine allows this intervention to be articulated through two very different yet equally incisive artistic practices. Giaretta, an artist and filmmaker born in Padua in 1983 and based in Amsterdam, develops a practice centred above all on moving images, weaving together images, texts and sounds in works that introduce suspended, estranging and visionary elements into reality. Claire Fontaine, a feminist conceptual artist founded in Paris in 2004, develops a practice that addresses themes of language, power, alienation and the possibility of emancipation, redefining the artwork as a critical and political space. Taken together, the two new posters do not illustrate peace in a rhetorical or celebratory way, but rather question its complexity, entrusting the image with the possibility of opening up a space for reflection and awareness.

Public presentation of the project

Public presentation of the project
In Potenza, the 3500 cm² project thus takes the form of a simple and radical gesture: placing two artists’ works into circulation free of charge, so that art can leave the library, reach new contexts and continue to act within social space as a shared experience, a visual memory and an opportunity for thought. The choice of the Biblioteca Nazionale di Potenza as the venue for the presentation of the project, scheduled for 26 May 2026, further reinforces this dimension. As a place dedicated to knowledge, education and public consultation, the library becomes here a space in which art is not merely presented, but put into circulation. The poster, an essential and democratic format, is thus confirmed as a device capable of expanding the audience for art and transforming a simple gesture — taking an image, carrying it away, displaying it, preserving it — into a form of cultural participation. The posters produced specifically for this occasion, within the framework of the SAI project of the Province of Potenza managed by Arci Basilicata, will be presented during a public meeting by Lorenzo Benedetti, an art critic and curator with extensive international experience. Lorenzo Benedetti will then be in conversation with Professor Anna Lisa Tota, Deputy Rector of Roma Tre University, who coordinated a highly interesting project entitled Tamigrart, which concluded in February 2026 with the conference “Cartographies of Hope: Art, Memories and Resilience in Migratory Processes”, and in which Fondazione Città della Pace also collaborated. Professor Tota will present the results of the Tamigrart project, which explored the relationships between art, traumatic events and resilience, with particular attention to two different types of diasporic memories: a) individual, collective and public memories of forced migration across the Mediterranean; and b) individual, collective and public memories of migrants fleeing the war in Ukraine. The main idea of the Tamigrart project was to study the relationships between artistic representations and political articulation, with the aim of adding new dimensions, particularly with regard to the question of achieving historical truth and reconciliation.

The artists and speakers

Claire Fontaine

Claire Fontaine is a feminist conceptual artist founded in Paris in 2004. From the outset, the project defined itself as a collective and impersonal practice, adopting the name of a well-known brand of school notebooks in order to critically question the relationships between subjectivity, production, language and power. Claire Fontaine’s work addresses themes such as alienation, political crisis, the condition of the contemporary individual, forms of systemic violence and the possibility of emancipation, through the use of texts, neon works, sculptures, installations, videos and appropriations. Her research is based on the idea that the artwork can function as a critical device capable of calling into question the symbolic and social codes that regulate everyday life. Over the years, Claire Fontaine has established itself as one of the most recognisable presences in international contemporary art, developing a practice that brings together theoretical radicality, formal clarity and political tension.

Giovanni Giaretta

Born in Padua in 1983, Giovanni Giaretta lives and works in Amsterdam. His practice develops primarily through film, video, installation and writing, and emerges from a research process that connects images, texts and sounds. His works often move along the boundary between the observation of reality and imaginative displacement, introducing visionary, estranging or suspended elements that transform apparently ordinary situations into perceptual experiences charged with ambiguity and attention. After studying Design and Production of Visual Arts at IUAV University in Venice, he took part in residency and training programmes in Venice, Paris, Amsterdam and New Orleans. Since 2019, he has also been teaching in the Moving Image and Fine Art departments at the AKI Academy of Art & Design in Enschede. His works and films have been presented in international institutions, festivals and exhibition spaces, confirming a practice in which the language of moving images becomes a tool for listening, narration and the displacement of the visible.

Lorenzo Benedetti

Anna Lisa Tota