Catalogue of the exhibition Canicula
Fondazione In Between Art Film announces the publication of a richly illustrated catalogue to accompany Canicula, the group exhibition commissioned and produced by the Fondazione at the Complesso dell’Ospedaletto, Venice, from May 6–November 22, 2026, on the occasion of the Biennale Arte 2026 in Venice. The publishing of the catalogue of Canicula marks the end of a trilogy of exhibitions and publications that has accompanied the work of Fondazione In Between Art Film for the past six years. Titled “Trilogy of Uncertainties,” it has explored environmental atmospheres and reflected on the multi-faceted ways in which these metaphoric constructions can describe our shared social, political, and media landscape, and the role of moving images within it.
Edited by Bianca Stoppani with Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi, this volume expands on the making of Canicula and offers an in-depth look at the curatorial concept, the exhibition scenography, and the creative processes and poetic concerns of the eight video-installations by Lawrence Abu Hamdan (1985, Jordan), Massimo D’Anolfi and Martina Parenti (1974, Italy/1972, Italy), Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk (1992, Ukraine/1993, Ukraine), Janis Rafa (1984, Greece), P. Staff (1987, United Kingdom), Wang Tuo (1984, China), Yuyan Wang (1989, China), and Maya Watanabe (1983, Peru). All eight works are commissioned and produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film, the initiative conceived by Beatrice Bulgari to promote the culture of moving images and to support international artists, institutions, and theorists in their explorations of the dialogue between disciplines and time-based media.
The book opens and closes with a visual essay composed by Giacomo Bianco, using the photographs he took for the exhibition’s visual campaign. He has interpreted Canicula’s atmospheres of scorching heat and blinding light by portraying the Venetian lagoon and the Complesso dell’Ospedaletto through obfuscating flashes and flaring lenses.
The exhibition and the wider rationale of the Fondazione’s work is told via a series of texts by our President and Founder Beatrice Bulgari, the co-curators of Canicula Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi, and the co-creators of its scenography from 2050+ studio, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli and Francesca Lantieri. Each of them sheds light on a different aspect: from the vocation of the Fondazione, to the curatorial atmosphere and its entangled methodology, to the spatial and material translation of the curatorial framework.
The exhibition is fully illustrated in the book’s central section, where documentation images made by Marco Cappelletti Studio walk the reader through the artists’ video installations and the transformations of the Complesso dell’Ospedaletto.
A two-part monographic section has been dedicated to each of the artists featured in the exhibition: one that documents both the narrative and production aspects of their video installations, and another that expands upon the artists’ practice both via a newly commissioned essay and an original visual contribution. While the first part is consistent throughout, the second part functions differently, responding to the varying themes and poetics of each of the works.
The commissioning process for the essays and the designing of the visual contributions stem from a desire to offer a set of complementary points of view to the video installations, both on a critical and research level. This is the reason why the fields of expertise of the writers involved—Svitlana Biedarieva, Leo Goldsmith, Ana Janevski, Alvin Li, Mason Leaver-Yap, Dubravka Sekulić, Nicole Shukin, Jan Verwoert, and Sophie Williamson—range so widely, from environmental humanity to media culture, affect theory and philosophy, experimental film-making, performance, architecture, and art history. This is also the reason why the visual contributions vary so much among each other, and use materials as diverse as Romantic paintings, early twentieth-century ads, ancient optics diagrams, and forensic visualization, and presentations as different as encyclopedia-style thumbnails, screenshots from digital folders, fictional film strips, and book scans.
Such collective endeavors are once again shown in this book—as they were in the catalogues for Penumbra and Nebula—according to a layout originally designed and, through the years, implemented by Lorenzo Mason Studio, which also designed the exhibition’s visual identity, exemplified here by the book’s cover.
The book is available to order online via Marsilio Arte e-shop.
For international media inquiries, please contact Sam Talbot: Matthew Brown, matthew@sam-talbot.com, T +44 (0) 7989 446557
For Italian media inquiries, please contact Lara Facco P&C: Lara Facco, larafacco@larafacco.com, T +39 349 2529989 / Marianita Santarossa, marianitasantarossa@larafacco.com, T +39 333 422 4032
The cultural programme of Fondazione In Between Art Film is focused on the role of contemporary moving images and the support of international artists, institutions, and research centres exploring the dialogue between different disciplines. The Fondazione investigates the boundaries of time-based media—film, video, performance and installation—through commissioning and producing new works, organizing exhibitions and public programs, collaborating with international institutions, and producing editorial projects. The Fondazione continues and expands the work of the production company In Between Art Film, which from 2012–2019 supported video and filmic productions by international artists and directors.