Give voice to the city of Catania and engage in a dialogue with it: thirty young designers from all over Italy have attempted to portray Catania through a series of posters which, from 11 to 24 September, will be put up on the streets of Catania, creating a sort of widespread, collective exhibition.

The project Let the City speak was conceived and produced during the 2023 Summer School of the First Level Master's degree in Visual Communication and Art Direction, an intensive and immersive workshop held from 28 July to 2 August in the spaces of Isola, a coworking and event venue located inside Palazzo Biscari, under the guidance of the two South Tyrolean graphic designers: starting from a series of meetings with local associations, the exploration of the urban fabric and direct contact with the people who inhabit and experience it every day, the master's students, together with a small group of recent graduates and designers under 35, collected images, anecdotes and points of view from which they drew inspiration for the posters. According to the two tutors, in fact «today's visual communication must be very human, detach itself from the medium and technology, convey emotions and tell stories».

The result is a kaleidoscope of ideas, themes and subjects: there are those who have graphically interpreted the dialect and the typical street cries of the city's two main markets, the Fera O“ Luni and the fish market; those who have explored culinary tradition as an identifying trait, food as a ritual and as the driving force behind numerous social and family conventions; and those who have sought to focus attention on working-class neighbourhoods and celebrate the people who live in them and are their face, such as Francesco Grasso, known to everyone as ”Franchina’, a long-standing resident of San Berillo.

The posters were produced on Fedrigoni paper, using both analogue and digital techniques and tools. The original works were presented by Isola Catania, where they remained on exhibition throughout August, and will soon be exhibited by Trame di Quartiere. The posting of the posters around the city was made possible thanks to the contribution of the Catania-born artist Sandra Virlinzi, known as Sdrina, who is the creator and curator of numerous exhibitions, a former co-founder of the Ultrapop collective and an enthusiast of expressive languages linked to popular culture.

Participants: Riccardo Baldani, Lucrezia Berardi, Antonio Bianchino, Isabella Cecin, Rossella Cesaro, Margherita Dall’Oglio, Carmela De Nicola, Marta Facheris, Francesco Falcone, Maurizio Fracchiolla Lettieri, Ada Gallo, Carla Gangemi, Davide Locatelli, Valeria Loreti, Francesca Maio, Bojan Milinkovic, Elisa Morganti, Paola Morvillo, Ivan Nannavecchia, Domenico Nuzzi, Lucia Pitruzzello, Gaetano Roselli, Cecilia Rossettini, Gaetano Salemi, Valeria Sanna, Roberta Schilirò, Simone Spedicato, Martina Spinelli, Giulia Travagliante, Marco Villari.