A mosaic of humanity resulting from a chorus of faces that help rediscover what matters in life. It ranges from the exemplary story of love, and faith, between Blessed Franz and his wife Franziska Jägerstätter to the moving experience of the ‘Lighthouse,’ a pediatric hospice in Moscow that cares for more than a thousand young patients and their families. From the very current rediscovery of the Flight into Egypt of Jesus' family to the cosmic mystery of the origin of the Earth. Passing through the rebirth of Italian villages, the beauty of art and photography. This is the picture of events – human and artistic, historical and scientific – illustrated by the fifteen exhibitions at the Rimini Meeting, which this year invited the curators to answer the question that gives the title to this year’s edition: "If we are not after the essence, then what are we after?"

"The exhibitions have always offered a valuable contribution to understanding the title of the Meeting, and each one does so in its own way each time," explains Alessandra Vitez, exhibitions manager of the Meeting. "This year, in particular, they help us rediscover what is essential, within the historical context in which we live, within the contradictions and issues that do not add up, sometimes helping us to ask the right questions." Just as it was for Blessed Jägerstätter, whose story tells of "a full, happy, fulfilled life experience, despite everything he had to face, under very harsh circumstances," in the shadow of the Nazi regime. Yet his "human journey in relationship with reality and his friendship with Christ” made it possible for him to "live an authentic faith and a marriage vocation that helped him grasp the source of light of the essence and mature the awareness of giving his whole life."



But how does one recognize the essence? "For me, to discover the essence," Vitez observes, "it is first necessary to become aware of who I am. This is what happened to that "phenomenon of nature," a restless and courageous doctor, the servant of God Enzo Piccinini, who was conquered by Christ’s embrace through his unique friendship with Fr. Giussani, as recounted in an exhibition that marks the 25th anniversary of his death. But in Rimini there is space to take everything about the human seriously, "all the demands of good, of beauty, the original demands of justice and truth," the exhibitions manager continues. Space, therefore, is also given to politics, understood as service, thanks to the message of a surprisingly modern figure like Alcide De Gasperi, rather than to the ever-present drama of war with ‘1914. Something New on the Western Front,’ which photographs a moment in which, even in diversity, soldiers recognize themselves as brothers because they follow what the heart glimpses as good; or to the timeless message of poverty and homelessness of the Progetto Arca, a living experience that sprang from the charism of Brother Ettore, a full immersion into "the need of others in order to learn to know our true need. We are all 'breakable.'" Because "it is by risking all I am that I come to discover what is the essential point that allows me to breathe, to live fully, to see in things not only what is tied exclusively to my measure, my interpretation or the image we all tend to make of them."

Organizing the exhibitions is "a real job," Alessandra assures, a job that "lasts a year and sometimes even longer." It is beautiful because "it is done together, with the contribution of everyone, from the curators to the volunteers, who may only come to sand down a corner of one of the displays that no one will see, but that too contributed to building the beauty that points you towards something beyond.” It is a "necessary, often exhausting chorus, a work that helps to achieve the goal even if sometimes it does not look like it, but it does." It has been a meticulous work of reconstruction of the human that every year has as its horizon the whole world,the friendship among peoples, as well as enormous cultural value. As confirmed by the contribution of exhibitions such as, for example the exhibit on absence and demand in Pär Lagerkvist's "Barabbas" or Luxtenebra, promoted by the Custody of the Holy Land and the Association pro Terra Sancta, one hundred years after the construction of the Basilica of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor and the Basilica of Agony at Gethsemane. The point is not only to celebrate their immense historical, archaeological and spiritual value, but to emphasize the relevance of their message.

Or the rediscovery of one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, William Congdon, through his ‘Tour of the World’ in fourteen works; paraphrasing Saint-Exupéry, Congdon allows us to rediscover that the essence can be visible to the eyes. Photographer Curran Hatleberg also testifies this with his snakes, alligators and bodies of water that tell the story of the southern United States, from Florida to Mississippi. "He is an author we have yet to get to know fully, but we were attracted to how he, through his lens, experiences the desire to look at what is there, beyond what he sees." They are gazes that help us to know more, as does that of Camilian Demetrescu, an artist who knew Fr. Giussani and who participated several times at the Meeting, especially in the early years of the event.

The exhibition on the Jubilees, on the other hand, "is a historical exhibition, where the visitor becomes a pilgrim and which tells us how these gestures of the Church were born, which welcome the needs of the person, of anyone who sets out, who becomes a beggar, and gives them a merciful embrace that reaches us. It begins in 1300 and extends to the jubilee of 2025, which has hope as its theme. And alongside the story are wonderful images of contemporary art that help to understand the connection with today”, with the actuality of the search for the essence.

A beautiful photo of our planet as seen from space then opens the exhibition ‘Earth. An oasis in the universe.’ "The Meeting cannot lack exhibitions on science," Vitez continues, "both because we always have a great team of scientists and because they represent the frontier of current issues. This year we wanted to look at the Earth starting from afar, from the formation of the universe, to the beginning of life, to man. Because we are always interested in emphasizing how, the more science progresses, the more we open the window to the mystery, to the ultimate why of it all." The self and the cosmos, the infinitely small and the infinitely large.



"What strikes me most about this year," concludes Vitez, who has already experienced about 20 Meetings working on exhibitions, "is how themes such as consciousness, the need for fulfillment and the question about vocation come up again in each exhibition. It is like a big mosaic of ‘humanity of the human,’ because everything has to do with the human. It is a human journey through facts, circumstances and faces, in which each ‘piece’ asks us why. Not just ‘why did such and such a thing happen,’ but ‘why am I on this stretch of the journey?’ or ‘why did I meet this face?’ and ‘what does it tell me, what does it suggest?’ All of this – which I call the 'human journey' – is what brings us the essence." She adds a personal consideration. "If at the beginning of this year's work I asked myself, 'But with all this richness, how am I going to get to the essence?' I instead realized that it is precisely all this richness that allows us to be in front of what is essential. At first I thought that I have to dry, to remove… and instead I found myself having to look at every detail to be able to get to the essence, which is not a concept or a nice speech but takes shape in personal experience and I am very grateful for this.”

Read also - The essential on stage: The Meeting's shows

A final note: "We were just talking about this at one of the last meetings with some curators of an exhibition: the real discovery will be the Meeting itself. In fact, we have worked all year and have glimpsed that this essence is something extremely interesting that attracts us. But it will be during the days in Rimini that we will see what new things will happen. Because we need that week and the meetings with the many visitors and guests to be able to experience what we have only glimpsed so far."#TowardstheMeeting24