Mosaic in Ravenna is a bridge between past and present. Preserving within its walls some of the most significant examples of ancient mosaics, the city has made this artistic technique famous and continues to bear witness to its intensity today. From October 18, 2025, to January 18, 2026, Ravenna will host the IX Biennial of Contemporary Mosaic, promoted, organized, and supported by the Municipality of Ravenna, Department of Culture and Mosaic, coordinated by the MAR – Ravenna City Art Museum, with the artistic direction of Daniele Torcellini, and made possible thanks to the contributions of the Emilia-Romagna Region, Marcegaglia Ravenna, the Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna, Orsoni Venezia 1888, and the Cingoli Foundation .
The title "Shared Place," the key to this ninth edition, invites us to explore the planned initiatives, starting from the idea that mosaic is a language that sparks relationships, between tiles and between people. In an era like the present, so sadly marked by war, political, social, and economic conflict, it seems necessary and urgent to reflect on the possibilities of encounter, discussion, and dialogue, in the real places we inhabit and travel through, and not just in virtual spaces, where sharing is reduced to a click that leaves us alone in front of screens. Mosaic, as an artistic technique that connects us with matter, as public art, and as the sensitive skin of architecture and urban spaces, reminds us that stepping onto the same tiles, or finding ourselves facing the same reflected light, can be a political act. The events of the 9th Contemporary Mosaic Biennial involve museums, cloisters, monuments, galleries, workshops, cultural associations, temporary and symbolic spaces, to enhance mosaic in the many fields in which it is expressed and which Ravenna well represents: artistic research, high craftsmanship, applied arts, education, restoration, economic and entrepreneurial activities.