Manifesta, also known as the European Nomadic Biennial, is a European pan-regional contemporary cultural biennale.
History Manifesta was founded in 1994 by Dutch art historian Hedwig Fijen.
Manifesta 1. The first edition took place in Rotterdam. One of the coordinators in Rotterdam was Thomas Meyer zu Schlochtern of the Rotterdamse Kunststichting.Manifesta – Volume 1. Foundation European Art Manifestation, 1996. Among the local artists brought into the international scene, were Jeanne van Heeswijk, Bik Van Der Pol, and Joep van Lieshout.Vanderlinden & Filipovic (2006, p. 208).
Manifesta 2. Luxembourg (1998)
Manifesta 3. Ljubljana (2000)
Manifesta 4. Frankfurt (2002)
Manifesta 5. San Sebastián (2004)
Manifesta 6. The 2006 edition of Manifesta was set to happen in Nicosia, Cyprus, under the direction of Florian Waldvogel, Mai Abu ElDahab, and Anton Vidokle. In June 2006, Nicosia for Art, the city-run nonprofit organization sponsoring the exhibition, cancelled the event due to political turmoil around the green line of Nicosia.
Manifesta 7. the 2008 edition took place across four cities in the Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol region of northern Italy: Bolzano, Trento, Rovereto, and Fortezza. Curated by Adam Budak, Anselm Franke, Hila Peleg, and the Raqs Media Collective, the exhibition was titled "100 Miles in 100 Days" and explored themes of transformation, memory, and regional identity. Among the participating artists were Claire Fontaine, Tatiana Trouvé, and Runa Islam, whose works reflected the biennial’s focus on site-specificity and cultural dialogue within post-industrial and historical spaces.
Manifesta 8. Murcia in dialogue with northern Africa (2010)
Manifesta 9. Limburg (2012)
Manifesta 10. Saint Petersburg (2014) in Russia created tensions as the government had just prohibited "gay propaganda".
Manifesta 11. Zürich (2016)
Manifesta 12. It was held in Palermo, Italy, around the theme "The Planetary Garden. Cultivating Coexistence". The exhibition put forward an interpretation of the city's history as the expression of a syncretism of cultures across the Mediterranean. The curators used the idea of the garden as a metaphor on how it might be possible to aggregate differences and to compose life out of movement and migration.
Manifesta 13. (planned to have been held in Marseille) cancelled due to Covid19,
Manifesta 14. It was held in Pristina, Kosovo, in 2022.
Manifesta 15. Barcelona (2024)
Manifesta 16 takes place in the Ruhr region of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, from 21 June to 4 October 2026. Under the title This is not a Church, the biennial is spread across four cities—Bochum, Essen, Gelsenkirchen and Duisburg—and uses former church buildings as venues for contemporary art and community projects. The edition focuses on the relationship between art, local communities and public space, including the reuse of buildings that have lost their original religious function.
Education Manifesta's Education and Mediation programme is a part of each Manifesta Biennial. The education team is among the first to begin developing programmes in Manifesta's host cities. The programmes created by the team are derived from conversations, extensive field research and sociocultural and educational mapping.
The programme is developed collaboratively with artists and associations of the host city and includes projects that are educational, curatorial, artistic, research-based, and accessible to everyone. The education team is responsible for developing a discursive mediation and a critical perspective on the curatorial project. Additionally the team creates a set of interrelated research-and-practice-based programmes focussed on local knowledge and practices.
Editions Year Edition Place Theme Curated by 1996 1st Rotterdam Katalyn NerayRosa MartinezViktor MisianoAndrew RentonHans-Ulrich Obrist 1998 2nd Luxembourg Robert FleckMaria LindBarbara Vanderlinden 2000 3rd Ljubljana "Borderline Syndrome. Energies of Defence" Francesco BonamiOle BoumanMaria HlavajováKathrin Rhomberg 2002 4th Frankfurt Iara BoubnovaNuria Enguita MayoStéphanie Moisdon 2004 5th San Sebastián Massimiliano GioniMarta Kuzma 2006 6th Nicosia Cancelled Florian WaldvogelMai Abu ElDahabAnton Vidokle 2008 7thFranzensfeste Bolzano
Trento
Rovereto "100 Miles in 100 Days" Adam Budak Anselm FrankeHila Peleg
Raqs Media Collective 2010 8th Murcia Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF)Chamber of Public Secrets (CPS)tranzit.org 2012 9th Genk Cuauhtémoc MedinaDawn AdèsKaterina Gregos 2014 10th Saint Petersburg Kasper König 2016 11thZurich "What People Do for Money: Some Joint Ventures" Christian JankowskiFrancesca Gavin 2018 12th Palermo "The Planetary Garden. Cultivating Coexistence" Ippolito Pestellini LaparelliMirjam VaradinisAndrés JaqueBregtje van der Haak 2020 13thMarseilleIndefinitely postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemicAlya Sebti, Katerina Chuchalina, Stefan Kalmár 202214thPristina "It matters what worlds world worlds: how to tell stories otherwise"Catherine Nichols Carlo Ratti202415thBarcelona "Balancing Conflicts", "Cure and Care" and "Imagining Futures"Sergio Pardo López
Filipa Oliveira202616thRuhr "This is not a Church"Josep Bohigas202817thCoimbra
Ownership The Manifesta Biennial is owned and organized by Amsterdam-based International Foundation Manifesta (IFM).
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