The exhibition "Fair in Sight" by author Maurizio Ferlin, a renowned Pula designer who, as one of the longest-standing collaborators of the Pula Book Fair, has created an overview of its visual solutions for the third decade of this event, as well as photographs, works by guest authors, and memorabilia, is open in the Museum-Gallery Space Holy Hearts.
The exhibition was created in collaboration between the Archaeological Museum of Istria and Sanjam Knjige U Istri, and this collaboration has already become traditional and has produced a series of major exhibitions to date; the Museum is also the main partner of the Fair.
"The exhibition is a display of what made the Pula Sa(n)jam different from other book events, especially in the field of visual communications. I hope that this interweaving of various creative practices and languages will yield some new reading that would reveal the inner character of thinking and creation inherent to the Book Fair in Istria," said Ferlin.
Director of the Archaeological Museum of Istria Darko Komšo noted that, besides our institution having collaborated with the Fair on exhibitions for 15 years already, we also have a rich publishing activity and a library with about 50,000 books.
"It is very thankless to speak publicly about a person you know both as a man and as an author. And I consider Maurizio Ferlin both a very good man and an excellent author, an author inspired by Istria, who lives and breathes Istria," said the county head of culture Vladimir Torbica.
The city head of culture Grad Pula Paola Orlić recalled her own collaboration with Ferlin, and noted that she too belongs to those who grew up with the Fair, while Fair director Magdalena Vodopija stated that Ferlin is, among others, the author of the Sa(n)jam knjigu coin, the famous Fair mascot, the Pufka puppet, and that his work on the Fair, besides enormous effort, very often involved suppressing his own authorship in service of the common idea.
Sa(n)jam knjige u Istri/Manuel Angelini/Petra Tadić