MASKS 2024-2026

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

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.

Molfetta's Holy Week rites at BIT Milan 2025, with immersive video, Bassa Musica and scarcelle tasting. Concept by Gaetano Armenio.

On a commission from the town council I turned Molfetta's Easter into a trade fair format, with the local tourism chain inside the story. And two boxes of sweets gone minutes before opening.

The case of the missing scarcelle

Everything was ready. Stand set up, videos on a loop, scarcelle packaged. Minutes before opening, the discovery. Two boxes of scarcelle had disappeared. In the storeroom of the regional Infopoint, only the empty packaging was left in the bin. Some curious operator had already sampled the Molfetta tradition in preview. No panic. I had planned a secret backup supply, because at trade fairs you don't rely on surveillance alone. In a few minutes I reorganized the display and the tasting. The presentation started on time.

An Easter that becomes a tourism product

On behalf of the Municipality of Molfetta I handled the participation in the BIT, the Milan International Tourism Exchange 2025, as a tourism and cultural marketing project. The aim was to turn Molfetta's Easter into a trade-fair format able to stand out among hundreds of destinations and to speak to buyers, operators and media. I built an experience, not a stand. Immersive video projections on the Holy Week rites, the Bassa Musica "Città di Molfetta" as an identity element, and the scarcella, the sweet that symbolizes the local Easter, at the center of a guided tasting that became a moment of B2B relationship.

But you don't take a format to a fair on your own. Before Milan I built a network with the operators of Molfetta's tourism supply chain, hospitality, restaurants, guides. Not as suppliers, as part of the story. Each brought their own part to the stand: some the products for the tasting, some the itineraries to offer buyers, some the readiness to host groups during Holy Week. At the BIT we shared the promotion, so that a buyer wasn't buying an event but a territory ready to receive them. I conceived the concept, designed the multimedia content and handled communication.

La Cassetta degli Attrezzi

Concrete vision to share: bring an Easter experience to the fair, not one more exhibitor among many
Immersive videos, live music and a sweet to taste, because brochures aren't remembered
Network the supply chain before the fair: hospitality, restaurants and guides sharing the promotion, so you sell a territory and not an event
A secret backup always ready, because at trade fairs the unexpected is the rule, not the exception
I conceived the concept and designed the multimedia content and communication
Coordinate Municipality, Pugliapromozione, Infopoint, Bassa Musica and local operators under a single direction

What I learned

At the BIT, Molfetta's Easter stopped being just a religious event and became a structured tourism product. I had prepared a whole experience, video, music, tasting, and behind it a coordinated territory. Yet the buyers didn't remember the video or the stand. They remembered the scarcella, and the story of the ones that vanished.

Find out more

- Watch the video of the BIT event on my YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drpGPt281xk

- Find out more about Easter in Molfetta and the Holy Week rituals:

https://www.settimanasantainpuglia.it/en/cities/the-ti-te.html