The Venice Biennial presents the 50th International Art Exhibition directed by Francesco Bonami – Dreams and Conflicts, the Viewer's Dictatorship.
"If our time no longer enables us to think of a great event of contemporary art as an exercise and a purely aesthetic dream, which is detached from the world and society, then it is even more unlikely that a show is the mere documentation of the world we live in and its conflicts. A contemporary art event today is the result of the contrast between the aesthetic dream and the document of conflict. This contrast has given rise to the 50th Exhibition of Visual Arts…" Francesco Bonami

2003 was the year of the fiftieth edition of the Venice Biennale, the most prestigious international contemporary art exhibition, which illycaffè has been collaborating with for a number of years. Its director that year was Francesco Bonami, an Italian art critic and curator residing in the United States. illycaffè commissioned him to design a special cup to commemorate the event. The idea Bonami based his Biennale on is in the title Dreams and Conflicts: the aesthetic dream of art and the conflicts of the reality we live in are not two impenetrable worlds, they border each other. The spectator crosses over the border, to gain another perspective—the artist’s vision—on the world around us. The border crosses the cup and saucer too, and are always visible, whichever way you turn them.