BAM is an international research festival in the field of visual arts, performing arts and theatre dedicated to the peoples and cultures bordering the Mediterranean Sea, focusing on the themes of welcome and dialogue.

BAM – Biennale Arcipelago Mediterraneo, returns to Palermo from 23 September 2022 to 22 January 2023.

Now in its third edition and faithful to its mutant nature, it is being renewed once again this year. The ambition this time is to transform Palermo into a great experimental hub for artists, starting from their research. INSATURO is the title of this edition, precisely to testify to the need to return to the workshop dimension where the queries and questions that the artists themselves pose in contemporary life and in their aesthetic and conceptual exploration provide the guide. Thus, it will not be a curatorial concept from which cascade artistic interventions; on the contrary, the biennale will take the form of a concatenation of events in residence that, by facilitating encounters and collaboration between artists, will produce a programme consistent with the objectives of the BAM-Biennale Arcipelago Mediterraneo. In this way, the theme of plural identities, of archipelagos that are distinct but also in dialogue with each other, is once again stressed within the programme. BAM will be hosted in various public spaces in the city centre, in squares and streets as well as at the Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa.

BAM is under the artistic direction of Andrea Cusumano and is curated by MeNO and Fondazione Merz, under the patronage of the Municipality of Palermo, and avails itself of the collaboration of numerous organisations and cultural associations in Palermo and beyond for the production and management of the many initiatives. These are numerous and among the many scheduled, these are just a few highlights:

– the collaborative project between Runonart (Athens), Cypriot artist Efi Spyrou and Stefania Galegati Shines.
– As part of the ZACentrale project, the Fondazione Merz is producing and exhibiting Isolitudine in the large space of Pavilion 19 at the Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa, an unprecedented exhibition device consisting of four solo shows curated by as many curators brought together in a single choral project. The themes of the exhibition will also meet the public through a dense programme of meetings, conferences, theatre and performance actions.
-Twinning with the biennale in Sète and Los Angeles.
-For the city of San Vero Milis in Sardinia, Salvatore Fenu presents a project in collaboration with Andrea Cusumano and Sislej Xhafa.
-The collaboration between Gry Worre Allberg, Sisters Hope Copehnagen and Egle Oddo, an artist from Palermo living in Finland, produced with the University of Aarhus.

The only national pavilion present is dedicated to Ukraine where works by artists in residence in Palermo will be presented.