2009 State Exhibition in South Tyrol

The 2009 State Exhibition will take place from May 10 through October 30 in Brixen, the cultural and conference city in the picturesque Eisack Valley—more precisely, at Franzensfeste Fortress. The venue for the State Exhibition rotates every two years among the regions of South Tyrol, Tyrol and Trentino, which together also form the cross-border European Region of Tyrol. Following this rotation, South Tyrol is hosting the State Exhibition this year, after the prestigious cultural event was last held in Trentino in 2007.

This year’s State Exhibition in Brixen, South Tyrol, is themed “200 Years of Tyrolean Freedom Struggle, 1809–2009.” The motto “Labyrinth::Freedom,” which accompanies the State Exhibition in South Tyrol, was developed back in 2007, when the project’s organizers won a Europe-wide ideas competition.

In terms of its thematic structure, the 2009 State Exhibition in Brixen can be divided into two main sections. Over the next six months, eight thematic exhibits, each designed independently, will explore the areas of imprisonment, society, borders, art and culture, mobility, languages, religion and science. It is worth noting that all of these themes can be linked, directly or indirectly, to the overarching motto “Labyrinth::Freedom,” with the labyrinth surely understood as a metaphor for “imprisonment.” The second main section is a labyrinth created at Franzensfeste Fortress, intended to illustrate to visitors to the State Exhibition in South Tyrol the difference between freedom and constraint.