"John Giorno was one of the few who embodied the idea that poetry can be an experience of the world, inhabiting bodies, voices, and spaces while opening up to the forms and languages of contemporary art. His work is now recognized as one of the most influential and transdisciplinary of the late 20th century, lying at the intersection of words and images, sounds and gestures, spirituality and pop culture. Thus, Giorno constructed an aesthetic and performative universe that still resonates with surprising relevance" - Lorenzo Balbi
John Giorno: The Performative Word
curated by Lorenzo Balbi
In a retrospective spanning six decades of history and culture, MAMbo presents the first major institutional exhibition dedicated to John Giorno. A poet and performer with magnetic stage presence, Giorno transformed words into experiences and art forms
John Giorno (New York, 1936 – 2019) was a magnetic poet and performer who knew how to transform words into art.
From February 5 to May 3, 2026, MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, a division of the Settore Musei Civici of Comune di Bologna - is presenting John Giorno: The Performative Word, curated by Lorenzo Balbi. Held in the Sala delle Ciminiere, this is the first major Italian retrospective celebrating one of the most radical and visionary figures in contemporary culture.
The show is part of the institutional program of ART CITY Bologna 2026, a series of exhibitions and events promoted by the Comune di Bologna and supported by BolognaFiere to coincide with Arte Fiera.
John Giorno was a key figure in the avant-garde New York scene. A poet, artist, and activist, he tore down the boundaries between disciplines, turning poetry into a living body capable of inhabiting unexpected places. His friendships and collaborations with major figures of that era, including Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, William Burroughs, John Cage, and Patti Smith, as well as his establishment of Giorno Poetry Systems in 1965 - a non-profit organization that revolutionized the dissemination of poetry by blending it with music, visual arts, political engagement, and community practices - are all a testament to Giorno's essential impact on art history.
«This retrospective dedicated to John Giorno fits perfectly into Bologna's artistic context - says Daniele Del Pozzo, Councilor for Culture of the Comune di Bologna - Giorno transformed words into public art, extending the practice of spoken performance beyond the written page into unconventional settings, such as streets and telephone lines. This aligns perfectly with Bologna's longstanding spirit of experimentation and openness to new art forms. The fusion of words and action, of personal life and work, was the catalyst for a new understanding of artistic practice as a means of intervening in public spaces to effect social change, as seen in AIDS activism. This model reflects Bologna's commitment to recognizing the value of diversity and making room for art that engages with the city and its inhabitants. The MAMbo-curated retrospective is a valuable experience that connects history, performance, and poetry, offering food for thought that remains relevant today.»
«John Giorno was one of the few who embodied the idea that poetry can be an experience of the world, inhabiting bodies, voices, and spaces while opening up to the forms and languages of contemporary art. His work is now recognized as one of the most influential and transdisciplinary of the late 20th century, lying at the intersection of words and images, sounds and gestures, spirituality and pop culture. Thus, Giorno constructed an aesthetic and performative universe that still resonates with surprising relevance,» says Lorenzo Balbi, curator of the exhibition.
The exhibition showcases the multifaceted artistic practice of John Giorno by presenting several groups of his works. This approach demonstrates how the artist enhanced poetic language through its plastic, relational, and performative qualities, thereby expanding the scope of words and venturing into the realms of visual arts and telecommunications networks. Much of his artistic production reuses excerpts from his poems, which are replicated on different media with carefully chosen colors and an iconic font.
The exhibition John Giorno: The Performative Word opens with Perfect Flowers, a series of vibrantly colored canvases containing lines dedicated to flowers and their qualities. Flowers are a recurring theme in Giorno's works. In his famous poem Welcoming the Flowers (2004), for instance, flowers serve as a reservoir of metaphors through which Giorno delves into the cycles of life, death and reincarnation, the constant transformation of things, and the joys of love, sexuality and political activism.
At the heart of the exhibition is Dial-A-Poem, an iconic interactive piece through which the artist made recordings of poets, artists, musicians and activists reading their work available to the public via telephone. Produced in 1969 and subsequently presented at the 1970 Information exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, this pioneering project transformed the telephone into a tool for disseminating poetry on a large scale. Over the years, the project grew to encompass 282 recordings by 132 authors, including Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg and Amiri Baraka. It also spawned international editions in several countries and became the emblem of participatory conceptual art.
For the exhibition John Giorno: The Performative Word, an Italian version of Dial-A-Poem, Dial-A-Poem Italy, was created specifically for MAMbo, involving over thirty contemporary Italian poets.Caterina Molteni, the museum's curator, selected the poets, who lent their voices to the sound project, which takes the audience into the beating heart of Giorno's vision. Among the poets are Antonella Anedda, Milo De Angelis, Valerio Magrelli and Patrizia Valduga. As in the original work, the Italian version offers an unpredictable listening experience: a phone call, an unexpected voice, and a poetic fragment that transforms the experience into a private performance. Anyone can dial the number + 39 051 0304278, which is available 24/7. The exhibition will also feature other editions, including Dial-A-Poem Brazil, France, Mexico, Thailand and Switzerland.
The exhibition continues with a section dedicated to archival materials, curated by Nicola Ricciardi with the collaboration of Eleonora Molignani. An installation designed by EX. (Andrea Massi, Serena Giardina and Michele Versaci) showcases posters, letters, books, and contracts, some of which have never been shown before. These materials trace John Giorno's trajectory between art and activism, relating his experience to that of other artists.
The video installation THANX 4 NOTHING evokes the deep human and artistic bond that united Giorno with his partner, Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone, until his death. In it, Rondinone portrays Giorno reciting the poem of the same name on stage. The piece highlights Giorno's gratitude for "everything and everyone": loves and losses, enemies and friends, discouragement and spiritual acceptance.
Also on display are screen prints from the Vinyl Paintings series, created in 1989. Here the texts oscillate between slogans and Buddhist mantras, revealing Giorno's diverse influences. In the Black & White Paintings series, begun in 2010, the word takes on a more assertive tone due to the stark contrast between the two colors and the brevity of the phrases. Their visual and expressive impact transforms the lines of the poem into sharp, unsettling and contradictory oracles. A selection of Works on Paper reveals a more delicate presence, made up of watercolor and graphite shades. In these pieces, the artist experiments with new text modulations.
A group of Early Prints, created between 1968 and 1974, interact with the other works on display. In these prints, John Giorno combines political and erotic texts taken from newspapers and magazines with his original compositions: the resulting sequences connect personal experience to the social and political landscape of that time, lending a voice to an open, collective "I". Alongside the texts, the exhibition features a series of video installations created in collaboration with Ugo Rondinone for the 2015 Palais de Tokyo exhibition, I ♥ John Giorno. Each installation consists of two vertical screens that play Giorno's voice while the text of the poem gradually changes color, as in karaoke.
The exhibition concludes with a selection of Rainbow Paintings, which pair the artist's verse with vibrant colors reminiscent of the rainbow flag of LGBTQIA+ communities, the cause for which Giorno fought as an activist throughout his life.
In line with MAMbo's longstanding curatorial focus on performance, the exhibition John Giorno: The Performative Word highlights the performative nature of the artist's poetic work and places it within the broader context of artistic experimentation in this area. From his early visual poems and language collages to the Electronic Sensory Poetry Environments of 1967, Giorno developed a poetics of energy based on rhythm, breath and vibration. In doing so, he anticipated themes central to intermedia arts today, such as cross-disciplinary work, the body as a vehicle of knowledge and the relational dimension of art.
This performative tension is crucially intertwined with Giorno's political commitment to the LGBTQ+ community, especially during the 1980s AIDS crisis, when he founded the AIDS Treatment Project, as well as with his adherence to Tibetan Buddhism, which added a profound meditative dimension to his work.
With John Giorno: The Performative Word, MAMbo pays tribute to an artist who redefined poetry as a form of expression that incorporates gesture, rhythm, the body and presence. Through this work, Giorno created a multidimensional language that is capable of uniting politics, spirituality and everyday life. His art restores the essential power of the voice and builds a bridge between history and the present.
To coincide with the exhibition, Mousse Publishing will publish a monograph produced with the support of Almine Rech, kurimanzutto and Galerie Eva Presenhuber (Zurich/Vienna). The book brings together a wide selection of archival material and texts by critics, curators, and experts, offering in-depth interpretations of Giorno's work.
The exhibition is organized in collaboration with Giorno Poetry Systems and with the support of Galleria Thomas Brambilla.
Accompanying the exhibition is a monograph published by Mousse Publishing. The volume brings together a wide selection of archival materials and texts by Lorenzo Balbi, curator of the exhibition; Drew Sawyer, curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York); the poet Kyle Dacuyan; and the curator Nicola Ricciardi. It also features a previously unpublished interview between Ugo Rondinone and Laura Hoptman, which together offer in-depth interpretative perspectives on Giorno’s work.
The publication was made possible thanks to the support of Shane Akeroyd, Almine Rech, kurimanzutto, and Galerie Eva Presenhuber.
