A festival transforming the city into a cultural laboratory
In Peschiera del Garda, Arilica – Festival della Cultura takes shape as a project of diffused contemporary art that, from March 21 to May 24, 2026, transforms the city into a true open-air exhibition space. The festival is promoted by the Municipality of Peschiera del Garda and curated by art historian Matteo Vanzan, with the support of culture councillor Elisa Ciminelli, with the aim of connecting the city’s historical heritage with contemporary artistic languages.
Squares, parks, and historical architecture thus become active exhibition spaces, within a programme that includes exhibitions, installations, performances, and talks.
BLABLABLA: a diffused exhibition on contemporary language
Within the exhibition programme is also the group show “BLABLABLA. Against Exhausted Language”, hosted in one of the city’s historical venues and dedicated to a critical reflection on contemporary communication and the overuse of language.
The project brings together several contemporary artists in a journey through painting, sculpture, installation, and video, with the aim of restoring density and meaning to artistic language, countering its progressive trivialisation.
Beppe Borella and monumental works in the public space
Among the most significant interventions of Arilica Festival are the monumental works by Beppe Borella, installed in Piazza d’Armi in Peschiera del Garda. The sculptures, entirely made of marble and of large scale, engage directly with the open space of the square and the daily flow of people, creating an immediate dialogue between the architectural dimension of the site and the solidity of the works.
In this way, the sculptures do not simply “occupy” public space, but become an integral part of it, introducing new visual reference points and redefining the relationship between viewer, architecture, and environment.
The city between memory and contemporaneity
Rather than a simple exhibition project, Arilica functions as a cultural device that connects the city’s history with the present. The festival’s very name recalls the ancient Latin denomination of Peschiera del Garda, highlighting the intention to recover and reinterpret its historical identity.
Within this framework, contemporary art becomes a tool for reading the territory, capable of activating a dialogue between memory and present-day artistic languages.
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