The luxury maison BVLGARI together with the Maxxi Museum, promote and reward, for the third edition, the work of young talents of contemporary art, selected for their innovative and experimental vision.
The award starts from afar, from a careful selection of many candidates, an expert team, made up of museum directors and illustrious curators such as Hoor Al Qasimi President and Director of Sharjah Art Foundation United Arab Emirates, Chiara Parisi Director Pompidou-Metz, Dirk Snauwaert Director of the WIELS Contemporary Art Center of Brussels, with Hou Hanru Artistic Director MAXXI and Bartolomeo Pietromarchi Director of MAXXI Art, they identify two candidates each, subsequently a pool of jurors, highlight three finalists and decree the winning project. This artist will have the opportunity to produce the work, create it and have a personal exhibition, in addition the museum will buy the work by becoming part of the Maxxi collection.
Also for this third edition the mission of the initiative was to research, discover, support and consolidate the work of Italian and foreign artists, who had presented a project of ethical, social and political, subtle, cultured and calibrated involvement that left at the same time ample space for the spectator’s interpretation. The finalists are Alessandra Ferrini, Silvia Rosi and Namsal Siedlecki, present in the panoramic Gallery 5, at thirdfloor of the Maxxi Museum, curated by Giuliana Ferrucci, works that tell portions of history that are indispensable for delving into complex and articulated themes, attentive to raising awareness of great political and social urgencies, aware of the importance of history, roots and the past. The three artists were born between the 80s and 90s and have exhibited their projects in public institutions in the last two years, already being favorably noticed by international critics.
The interviewed jury declared: “Alessandra Ferrini, Silvia Rosi and Namsal Siedlecki were chosen for their ability to express the aesthetic diversity, experimentation and productivity of the young Italian artistic generation through an innovative use of expressive means, from sculpture to photography and installations. multimedia. For the urgency manifested in their practices to imagine the future, addressing the ecological question through the transformation of matter, rethinking and redefining the question of cultural identity and geopolitical reality in relation to the consequences of colonization and socio-cultural transformations in the global context ” .
The exhibition welcomes us in the most beautiful place in the Museum, with display cases containing objects that have served the constructive investigation of the project.
Alessandra Ferrini lives and works in London, exhibits magazines, newspaper clippings, photographic and paper documentation in these entrance windows. La di lei work by her is an installation in three stages, complex and at the same time simple and punctual. Shocking to get lost in the conspiracy of events. You propose a historiographical investigation, born from an archival process, the result of research lasting six years, centered on the visit of the Libyan leader, between homageous political figures and others annoyed. An episode that happened in the capital: Muammar Gaddafi’s visit to Rome in 2009. “Gaddafi in Rome: Nates for a film” is a careful analysis of a long day, preceded and postponed by facts of colonial origin, which unfortunately are still current.
Personally I found it very interesting to retrace that part of history, having a more detached vision and to investigate the attitudes of the protagonists, deliberately by the press of the time, little considered but fundamental for a geopolitical reading of what happened. But out of place for an artistic review, even if it is avant-garde.
The section by Silvia Rosi, Italian – Togolese, is very engaging. With her photograph, she retraces the migratory paths that brought her to Italy, the journey of her memory to understand how we remember and why we forget. The preparation of the main work, which welcomes us at the entrance to the Gallery, consists in pronouncing together with the mother from Togo, in Italian and in the Mina language, the names of the objects of common use present in the display case. Everything evokes the sounds of distant lands, exploited by the Germans, colonizers of the country.
His project starts from a distant image, in his childhood memory, of his mother, while she carries objects on her head from the Lomè market. Hence the desire to retrace the path of its roots, identity, citizenship and belonging. Silvia Rosi works with photography and video and her work is inspired by stories handed down orally for generations, in the style of the West African tradition. Her work highlights the complex web of memories and cultural heritage, personal and collective needs. Photographs and moving images, backdrops of colored fabrics, Togolese sounds and words. The work “Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense” investigates the power of language as a generative element of the identity of an individual and a people.
Last, but not least in importance and message, the finalist Namsal Siedlecki. As a digital craftsman he proposes “Nuovo Vuoto”, a metaphorical journey into the empty spaces inside the bronze sculptures cast with lost wax. Like a modern alchemist he moves between ephemeral and permanent. Graduated in sculpture in 2010, he was born in the United States but moved to Italy, where he still lives and works. In his artistic experimentation, travels around the world contaminate his artistic path, like the sculptural techniques he learned in Kathmandu. Namsal Siedlecki always pays great attention to materials and their potential. On display large hands, which thanks to their full and empty, embody the awareness of a lost primordial balance, a continuous dialogue between past and present, between culture and spirituality.
All three finalists present a vision of the world, its criticality and its beauty made up of a past and a future that cannot but intertwine for an acceptable present. Once again the Prize is confirmed to be an experimental reception and listening basin for contemporary artistic projects. The winner will be announced in October.
Chiara Sticca
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