YES! we’re OPEN

 Lavazza has announced the latest version of its annual calendar by Alex Prager as well as a book by Fabio Novembre by the same title, YES! we’re OPEN. Both works embody the underlying concept that the beauty of a humanity that rediscovers its vitality and curiosity, expressing individuality and connecting individuals. The theme of the calendar is the lounge/café setting, reminding us that humanity cannot be labelled and categorized and that it’s only through mutual respect that we can share the joy of an unexpected meeting, a smile from a stranger, the feeling of being part of the world’s theatre of inexhaustible wonders.

Following the pandemic and at a point in time when the complexity of events is generating obstacles and divisions throughout society, Lavazza is inviting everyone to be open and see the differences between us as a valuable resource that enriches the community.

Through art - expressions of individual talent and creativity that become a common heritage - Lavazza continues along the path traced by the history of its calendar and the messages, at once universal and topical, it has sought to convey. Bringing down barriers is an objective within everyone’s reach, especially when stimulated by the vision of an artist like Alex Prager. Every little story, like every cup of coffee served every day, is a potential source of emotions, beauty and sharing that’s right there, in easy reach, waiting for someone to seize it.

In the 2023 Calendar, the bar is a place both real and metaphorical, an ambience where Alex Prager studies the uniqueness of the individual to highlight their value, thus embracing the theme of our common humanity and celebrating our differences, concepts that animate Lavazza’s vision and are so central to our world today.

Prager’s series of images - broad views alternating with revealing close-ups - are characterized by their meticulous construction and subtly provocative humour, while her taste for quotation, one of the main characteristics of her photography, mixes together allusions to classic Hollywood, fragments of experimental cinema, fiction and hyperrealism, pop iconography and staged photography. The result is a composition of saturated colours, unpredictable and vibrant like the lives of the people she chooses. It’s a Calendar in which the images speak for themselves, with no need for captions, and reach the viewer with the warmth and restorative capacity of the finest coffee.

“With this new art project,” says Lavazza Group board member Francesca Lavazza about the new Calendar, “Lavazza intends to convey important messages about diversity and inclusion, and it does so by starting out from its own origins and base, coffee, which has always been a byword for sociality, like the countless places that serve it. Over the last ten years, the Calendar has become a sort of manifesto for us, in which we use art as a means of focusing on things we feel deeply about and are in line with the company’s vision and commitments”.

YES! we’re OPEN is an art project that aims to be an instrument of change as well. It addresses a broad public and has special focus on young people. YES! we’re OPEN has now completed an ideal trilogy on the new humanity thanks to the work of an artist with a highly personal, indeed unmistakeable visual style. It’s time to “tell new stories”, just like those in the new Lavazza Calendar.

Lavazza’s commitment to environmental issues and the relationship between art, nature and society is expressed in various artistic initiatives. Its iconic Calendar, to start with, but also the production of art on its own account and support for exhibitions staged by major cultural players.

Lavazza believes in the idea of “positive and sustainable” art in two senses: responsible art, not for its own sake but capable of raising awareness in the people it addresses, inspiring them and persuading them to adopt sustainable behaviours, and art as a forum on issues of social, environmental and economic sustainability in which intellectuals in different fields – visual artists, scientists, architects – can pool their expertise with the common objective of focusing on the search for universal human values and behaviours that protect nature.

ENDS