Postponed for a year due to the pandemic, Expo 2020 officially started on October 1. INDiplomacy dedicated many articles to this universal exhibition, that aims to become a symbol of recovery after two difficult years.
During the six months of Expo, the city of Abu Dhabi will open the doors of the cultural complex of Manarat Al Saadiyat to various artistic events. Manarat Al Saadiyat is located on Museum Island, not far from the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Zayed National Museum and the Guggenheim.
The events hosted by the cultural complex include the international exhibition Pace e Amore (Peace and Love). The exhibition, launched in 2018 at the Great Mosque of Rome in cooperation with the Yunus Emre Institute, was selected as the official contemporary art event of Expo 2020. Pace e Amore is “a world-class exhibition” that aims at bringing togheter the West and the East through the themes of peace and love, says Giammarco Puntelli, commissioner and artistic curator of Pace e Amore at Expo 2020.
The exhibition followed a path in four stages: first, the art works were put on display for a month in the city of Alassio, near Genoa. The second stage was the presentation of the official catalogue of the exhibition at the Italian Parliament in Rome. Finally, after six months in Abu Dhabi, where the works of sixteen artists will be exhibited every month on a rotating basis, several personal exhibitions will be held in different parts of Italy.
More than 4000 artists participated in the official selection of Pace e Amore. The selection was accurate, aiming to bring to expo 2020 not only artistic excellence, but also “works that were not discriminatory and offensive to anyone” – explained Paolo Calcari, manager of Pace e Amore. The staging of the exhibition was designed and curated by architects Fabio Fidone and Ivana Vio, who are also among the 71 artists selected for the event.
Among the over seventy selected artists, there are artists such as Ignazio Colagrossi and Pamela Pagano. Colagrossi will participate with two sculptures: “Universal Peace” and “Intimate Thought” while Pagano will exhibit two paintings.
