PANORAMA POZZUOLI | ITALICS 2025

From August 27 to 31 in Valle Cascia, “Fumi della Fornace - Festa della Poesia” will take place, a project of artistic research and production curated by Associazione Congerie, active since 2019 in theatrical, performative, and editorial experimentation. This project was created to question the contemporary artistic landscape and to give shape to new practices and constellations of thought. Through the intersection of visual arts, performance, and curatorial practices, it takes the form of a process that activates, traverses, and re-imagines the landscape of Valle Cascia, transforming it into a wild, generative, and shared space. The festival will feature numerous artists, including Domenico Antonio Mancini, who will present a visual arts project on August 29 as part of the “Diffusa” section.

• Valle Cascia, Italy
• 27 – 31 agosto 2025

Faustus in Africa! reimagines the classic story of Faust's downfall, using puppetry and animation to address colonialism and the climate emergency. Directed by William Kentridge, this reworking of the Handspring Puppet Company’s 1995 production follows Faustus on a reckless journey through greed and excess, set in an African safari. The performance combines Kentridge’s animations with the company’s acclaimed puppetry (known from War Horse), creating a surreal and dramatic atmosphere. The haunting score, featuring Warrick Sony and the late James Phillips, intensifies the experience. With its moral exploration of trade-offs and compromises, the production remains highly relevant, 30 years after its debut, tackling the ongoing issues of colonialism and environmental crises.

• Zürcher Theater Spektakel, Switzerland
• 28 – 30 agosto 2025

Faustus in Africa! reimagines the classic story of Faust's downfall, using puppetry and animation to address colonialism and the climate emergency. Directed by William Kentridge, this reworking of the Handspring Puppet Company’s 1995 production follows Faustus on a reckless journey through greed and excess, set in an African safari. The performance combines Kentridge’s animations with the company’s acclaimed puppetry (known from War Horse), creating a surreal and dramatic atmosphere. The haunting score, featuring Warrick Sony and the late James Phillips, intensifies the experience. With its moral exploration of trade-offs and compromises, the production remains highly relevant, 30 years after its debut, tackling the ongoing issues of colonialism and environmental crises.

• Edinburgh International Festival, UK
• 20 – 23 agosto 2025

The "Atalantia Garden Project_2025" exhibition by Michele Guido is displayed across two interconnected spaces at Paper Times Bookstore in Xiamen. The first space features a site-specific installation observable only from the outside. It creates a total habitat, showcasing "writings" that emerge from interactions between insects and plants. The floor is covered in lotus plant stems and bulbs arranged in a serpentine pattern inspired by the Atalantia leaf, which was collected from the Botanical Garden of Florence. The walls feature frottage works of Zelkova trunks and Robinia leaves, while other surfaces are decorated with pinned A4 sheets, adding visual lightness to the space. The second space, set within the library, contains six large dandelion leaves, also using the green serpentine motif. These are positioned between niches filled with books on gardens, plants, and insects. Visitors are invited to explore the books and observe the relationships between living beings, both human and non-human, reflected in the artwork.

• Paper Times Bookstore, Xiamen, China
• 23 agosto – 23 settembre 2025

Lia Rumma Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in Panorama Pozzuoli with a work by the artist William Kentridge. Panorama returns to Campania for its fifth edition, choosing the city of Pozzuoli as its setting, a place steeped in history, myth, and natural power. Promoted by ITALICS and curated by Chiara Parisi, the exhibition will focus on the theme of divination, understood as a reflection on the sacred and the connection between the human and the transcendent. In Pozzuoli, where ancient cults and evocative landscapes coexist with contemporary life, art becomes a tool to explore memory, spirituality, and collective archetypes.

• POZZUOLI
• 10 – 14 settembre 2025

I Am Hymns of the New Temples is a site-specific exhibition that entirely transforms La Grande Halle of LUMA Arles into an immersive experience that blurs the lines between the metaphysical and the real. The site of ancient Pompeii, the legendary city that was buried under ash and volcanic debris for centuries, is at the center of his display. Its outstanding state of conservation offers a fascinating record of the diversity of cultures that shaped its unique identity, at the crossroads of civilizations and trade routes. Intertwining history, stories and contemporary narratives, Shawky reinterprets the ancient Greek myth of creation, through a spectacular choreography of movement, images and sounds, alongside unique sculptural and painterly elements, reflecting on the human need to understand and make sense of the world.

• LUMA Arles
• 5 luglio – 30 novembre 2025