MAXXI BVLGARI PRIZE 2020

Giulia Cenci (Cortona IT, 1988, lives and works in Amsterdam and Tuscany) was chosen for “the aesthetic tension present in her work that restores sculpture to its central role within the visual arts debate, as well as for her reflection on society’s future scenarios.”
She was proposed by Marianna Vecellio, Curator at Castello di Rivoli, Turin, who writes: “The works of Cenci are hybrid forms, resulting from the coexistence between living beings and an environment that is violently attacked by human beings. Through the study of form, the works of Cenci address the idea of the living being in the light of contemporary philosophical theories, which refer to the current age as the Anthropocene, a geological era that is the product of an irreversible action by human beings on the environment. Her works are the result of a formal, political and ontological “composting” process, and encourage us to change the way we look at the world, matter and human beings.”

Tomaso De Luca (Verona, 1988, lives and works in Berlin) was chosen for “his ability to explore history’s different identities through the investigation of the role of objects in the contemporary social and political context”.
As Lorenzo Benedetti, Curator at Kunstmuseum in St. Gallen, who proposed him writes: “Through the use of drawings, sculptures, videos and installations steeped in literary, philosophical and general culture references, Tomaso De Luca experiments with formal solutions in which the collective imagination is placed in a dialogue with a broader cultural spectrum. De Luca questions the symptoms of our society. A character of obsolescence seems to be present in his works creating a form of resistance to the consumerist nature of our time.”

Renato Leotta (Turin, 1982, lives and works in Acireale, Sicily), was chosen for “the independent nature of his research within the Italian national art scene and for the narrative force of his works that echoes the existential condition of contemporary human beings.”
He was proposed by Marianna Vecellio, Curator at Castello di Rivoli, Turin, who writes: Like a true archaeologist of reality, he observes the landscape to study its constitutive elements and capture its transient phenomena. Using different media, such as sculpture, photography, video, drawing and primary materials such as earth, sand and salt, he captures fragments of experience and turns them into mental pictures. In his works, he presents the reconstruction of an imagery, and through it he also provides a reconstruction of the cultural identity of today’s humanity, Moreover, his practice creates a poetic combination of apparently distant elements, such as history and the Mediterranean, the memory of places and reality, the sea and the earth, the North and South of the world.”