BICIPUGLIA 2013

We conceived a photo exhibition that sets the Easter rites of Molfetta beside those of towns in Spain and Portugal.

Rome, Church of Sant'Antonio dei Portoghesi, in the Jubilee year. Then Molfetta (Italy - Ba), Sala dei Templari, with the Embassies of Spain and Portugal to the Holy See. Scientific coordination by Professor José Luis Ponga of the University of Valladolid, Spain.

I bring the lights from home

The room's lighting rig was not enough. Postponing or scaling down was not an option. I loaded the lights from my bedroom into the car and brought them to the Sala dei Templari in Molfetta. It was not a perfect exhibition. It was alive.

 Spain sells its Holy Week, Apulia not yet

Medina de Rioseco, with fewer than five thousand inhabitants, carries twenty 16th and 17th century pasos on its shoulders and is a Festival of International Tourist Interest. In Peñafiel, a festival of national interest, on Easter Sunday a child dressed as an angel is lowered into the square on pulleys. Bercianos de Aliste, with the white mortajas (shrouds) of its brothers, has held regional recognition since 2011. In 2017 Braga welcomed almost 65,000 visitors from thirty countries.

Molfetta, the only Apulian town in the network, has the statue groups of the Friday of Sorrows and Holy Saturday carried on the shoulders of the confraternity brothers, and the funeral marches of its bands. Rites shaped largely during two centuries of Spanish viceroyalty, with the same confraternities and the same pathos. There, Easter is a reason to travel. Here, it is still a village feast.

Since 2008 I have been working on this with Holy Week in Apulia, a network of 22 municipalities. The next step was missing. Putting our rites beside theirs, in the same room, and letting visitors make the comparison themselves.

A network of five towns in three countries

The network of towns it activated links Molfetta, Braga, Medina de Rioseco, Peñafiel and Bercianos de Aliste. Two venues: Rome, in the Church of Sant'Antonio dei Portoghesi, and Molfetta, in the Sala dei Templari. I handled concept, planning, communication and set-up, with the collaboration of the FeArt Cooperative of Molfetta and the support of the Municipality of Molfetta.

Ninì Vernola's performance

At the Molfetta opening, in the Sala dei Templari, I paired the exhibition with a theatrical performance by the unforgettable actor Ninì Vernola. A dense reading that touched on war and the suffering of the children of Gaza. It moved the audience. It drew criticism from the local institutions present at the opening. I do not regret it.

La Cassetta degli Attrezzi

Build the network before building the exhibition: embassies, municipalities, confraternities and cultural bodies from three countries
The unexpected gets handled, not postponed: the bedroom lights lit the photographs because there was no alternative
Pair art with civic commitment: a performance that divides is a performance that touches something real
I handled the concept, organisation, communication and setup of the photographic project.

What I learned

The lights from my bedroom lit the photographs for a month in a hall in Molfetta. The comment I heard most often from visitors was: «I did not think an exhibition could be this involving». They were not saying it despite the home lights. Perhaps because of them.

Rome – Church of Sant'Antonio dei Portoghesi

https://youtube.com/shorts/KZHbVOQgmJQ?si=fJcGicZmJt7Oc0F2

Molfetta – Sala dei Templari

https://youtube.com/shorts/SKtiV8vr7wk?si=G7-Fk8-yaSDw8cct

MASKS, a European project on traditional masks in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Romania. Twelve partners, three years. Communication by Gaetano Armenio.

Born from a WhatsApp chat between colleagues and approved by the European Commission: 12 partners, 4 countries, 3 years of activity.

From Valladolid to a European project

In 2019, during the exhibition Plenilunio di Primavera in Valladolid, some lecturers from the Spanish university (Maria Pilar Panero and Jose Alonso Ponga)had followed closely the work on communicating Apulian Easter rites. A few years later a message arrived on WhatsApp: they wanted to involve me in a European project on traditional masks, entrusting me with the international communication.

An informal conversation about masks and cultural identity. None of us thought that in a few months it would become a three-year project approved by the European Commission. MASKS was born this way, from an exchange between people who trusted one another before they even had a dossier to submit. From relationships built in the field, not from calls for tenders studied at a desk.

What MASKS is

MASKS works on the valorisation of the anthropological and zoomorphic masks tied to the age-old traditions of various European territories, bringing together research, training, visual arts and communication. The aim is to build a digital archive of the masks and the ritual practices connected to them, and to give international visibility to territories often outside the major tourist circuits.

The network brings together 12 partners among universities, training centres, research institutes and cultural bodies from Spain, Portugal, Romania and Italy. Two international exhibitions are planned in two European Capitals of Culture.

The lead partner in the project is the University of Valladolid in Spain, coordinated by Professor Maria Pilar Panero.

La Cassetta degli Attrezzi

Know-how: the Spanish lecturers saw me work in Valladolid before they proposed MASKS to me
Building relationships in the field, not only by email: trust is built in person, project by project
Handling last-minute difficulties without making them weigh: it is part of the method, not an exception
I designed and coordinate the international communication of the project: website, video, photographic reportage, social media

What I learned

MASKS is still ongoing. What I already know is that five years separate an exhibition in Valladolid from a project funded by the European Commission. In between there was no call for tenders: there was the quality of the work done and the trust of those who had seen it.

Photo by Gaetano Armenio

- Official project website:

https://www.unveilingthemasks.uva.es

- Institutional video:

https://youtu.be/dJ8aUiIu-kI

- Documentary on Tricarico (Basilicata):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vs-8td0RSw&t=7s

Field interview:

https://youtu.be/epYecj80BM4

Thirty years of Molfetta's Santa Cecilia Band on show at Sala dei Templari, 7 March 2026. Concept and graphics by Gaetano Armenio. 

Thirty panels, thirty years of history. And the microphone I was not expecting.

«Gaetano, take the microphone and speak»

Molfetta, Sala dei Templari, 7 March 2026, 7 p.m. The room was full and everything was still, waiting for who knows what. Then someone came up to me: «Gaetano, take the microphone and speak». I was not expecting it. I took the microphone and started from where it all started: 22 April 1996, fifteen people, one single conviction.

Thirty years to tell, not to celebrate

When the Santa Cecilia Band Association entrusted me with the design and coordination of the photography exhibition for its thirty years of activity, I understood at once that celebrating was not enough. It had to be told. "30 years of music and passion" is an exhibition path of more than thirty photographic panels, opened on 7 March 2026 at the Sala dei Templari in Molfetta, with the patronage of the City Council.

It retraces thirty years of history: from the founding in 1996 through the Holy Week of Molfetta, the Patron Saint Feast, the concerts and the music school. The funeral marches that accompany Apulian processional rites are not simply music: they are the sound identity of an entire region, kept with pride by associations like the Santa Cecilia Band.

La Cassetta degli Attrezzi

Concrete vision to share: thirty years of sound history are not celebrated, they are told
Building a narrative path, not a collection of photographs: each panel sets up the next
Writing in a double register: the Molfetta local recognises the story, the visitor discovers it for the first time
Communication on several levels: press releases, social content, interviews for local and regional media
I handled the graphics, texts and visual identity of the exhibition.

What I learned

I wrote all the panel texts and looked after every detail of the communication. The one thing I had not planned was the microphone. They passed it to me with no warning and I started from 22 April 1996. The room knew that date by heart. The unexpected gets handled: it is the part of the job you do not write into the quote.

> Press

https://www.puglialive.net/30-anni-di-musica-e-passione-la-banda-santa-cecilia-inaugura-la-sua-mostra-fotografica-a-molfetta-il-7-marzo/

https://www.molfettaviva.it/notizie/trent-anni-in-musica-la-banda-santa-cecilia-racconta-molfetta/

https://www.laltramolfetta.it/banda-santa-cecilia-30-anni-di-musica-e-passione-in-mostra/

https://molfettalive.it/2026/03/03/trentanni-di-musica-memoria-e-identita-sabato-si-celebra-la-banda-santa-cecilia/

> Video

https://youtu.be/2LqefOHKLxo?si=sonJ6cNKMXslMgAd

https://telenorba.it/2026/03/09/molfetta-i-30-anni-della-banda-di-santa-cecilia-celebrati-in-una-mostra/

Since 2021 I have handled communication, graphic design and at times photography for Festival Viator, the music festival of the pilgrim routes. It began with an artistic director who went round the same circuit every year to keep his festival alive. A drive to Terlizzi, an application to the Italian Ministry of Culture, a phone call at midnight. Four more editions since then, and four regions.

He’d come to ask for ‘a helping hand’

February 2021. Giovannangelo de Gennaro walks into Editrice L'Immagine and asks for a contribution to Festival Viator, then in its seventh edition. I know him well. He is a wayfaring musician and he directs the festival with Michele Lobaccaro of Radiodervish. I heard him out and told him what I had been thinking for a while. Gianni, you cannot go round every year begging from private companies and public bodies. Enough. Raise the bar and dream bigger.

From Terlizzi to the Ministry

Dreaming big, though, is done with your feet on the ground. I took him to Terlizzi, to Oronzo Amorosini, a cultural project designer. Oronzo built the dossier and submitted it to the Italian Ministry of Culture for FUS performing arts funding. Then months of silence, the administrative kind that makes you think you have wasted your own time and a friend's as well.

In the middle of summer, at midnight, Oronzo called. The Ministry had approved it. Not for one year, for three.

Festival Viator, music and pilgrim routes across four regions

Viator began in 2015 from an idea by de Gennaro and Lobaccaro and it holds together music and the world of the pilgrim routes, the old medieval ways walked again today by people looking for a slower kind of travel. Minds, hearts and bodies on the Via Francigena of the south.

From October to December it runs across Apulia, Basilicata, Molise and Lombardy. Its stages have hosted Vinicio Capossela in Molfetta Cathedral, Antonella Ruggiero, Alice and Juri Camisasca. In February 2023 the ninth edition was presented at BIT in Milan, the International Tourism Exchange. A festival of sacred music and walking routes had become a tourism product. That is what I had in mind when I said enough.

La Cassetta degli Attrezzi

A concrete vision worth sharing, a festival living on yearly contributions is not a festival, it is a fundraiser with music inside

When someone asks you for one thing, check whether the problem is another one, the contribution solved a single edition, the Ministry funding solved three

Putting in touch people who do not know each other, an artistic director from Molfetta and a cultural project designer from Terlizzi who would never have crossed paths

What I learned

That day I was asked for a cheque. I gave an address in Terlizzi and a sentence put badly. Dreaming big on its own is not enough, what Viator needed was not my enthusiasm but a dossier filled in properly. The cheque would have gone into a single edition. The address in Terlizzi has lasted since 2021.

At the same BIT in 2023 I launched Pugliautentica.it with fourteen municipalities and a marching band in the aisles. The bass drum, though, was at risk of not arriving.