TRIESTE – Felipe Arturo is the recipient of the illy SustainArt studio residency, which will last for three months over the summer at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (BLM).
The jury – chaired by Michelangelo Pistoletto, artist and Artistic Director of Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto, and composed of Angela Vettese, Planning Consultant for the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (Italy), curators Meskerem Assegued (Ethiopia), Carlos Basualdo (Argentina), Suman Gopinath (India), Gerardo Mosquera (Cuba), Mariangela Mendez Prencke (Colombia) and Carlo Bach, Artistic Director of illycaffè – chose the work of the Colombian artist as the most deserving of all the works uploaded by artists and curators onto the www.illysustainart.org website.
Felipe Arturo was born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1979. After graduating in architecture from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Arturo went on to specialise in Art at Columbia University in New York. His art is informed by aspects of town planning, architecture and art, considering them in the context of politics, history, geography and economics.
Arturo’s work is primarily composed of sculptures, installations and videos used to explore issues related to structure, sequence and materiality.
“This year, the high quality of the pieces submitted via the illy SustainArt website has once again made the selection process extremely difficult.
Nonetheless, the work submitted by Colombian artist, Felipe Arturo, stood out for the extraordinary formal synthesis through which a careful anthropological study of places and spaces is able to translate itself into an immediately accessible visual language.
In a sphere of absolute freedom such as art, Arturo manages, with the clear lightness of touch that characterises his work, to transform an artistic medium into a critical space for cultural democracy,” stated Carlo Bach, Artistic Director of illycaffè.
The residency consists of a three-month course of study at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice, during which the artist will have the opportunity to work in close contact with the other young beneficiaries of the Fondazione’s awards and participate alongside them in the many events that are organised every year for the winning young artists.
At his disposal will be a personal workshop within the Saints Cosma and Damiano studio complex on the island of Giudecca (already home to five of the twelve BLM studios), where the Fondazione will arrange frequent studio visits by journalists, critics and curators in the field, both independent and representing the foremost national and international institutions dedicated to young artists, such as the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), the Camden Arts Centre (London) and Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin).
He will be able to present his work to the general public during the Artists’ Talk sessions and Open Studios days.
During the three months, Arturo will stay at the Palazzo Carminati guesthouse, living in close contact with the young studio recipients and benefiting from an environment rich in stimuli and interpersonal relationships.
With this residency, the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa continues the journey that it started with “Art Enclosures / Confini d’Arte”, and confirms its commitment towards non-EU artists from developing countries with a spirit of discovery and reciprocal help.
illy SustainArt
The illy SustainArt project was founded in 2007 with the intention of expanding illycaffè’s involvement in contemporary art and extending its approach towards sustainable development to the international artistic community.
The project is centred around the website www.illysustainArt.org, an open window into the world of contemporary art that is intended to be a point of reference, a place for meeting and cultural exchange to be enjoyed by artists and curators from emerging countries, who have the chance to show their work via this site to renowned exponents of international contemporary art: Meskerem Assegued, Carlo Bach, Carlos Basualdo, Suman Gopinath, Gerardo Mosquera, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mariangela Mendez Prencke and Angela Vettese.
Part of this project is the illy SustainArt Prize, which the company periodically awards to emerging artists chosen on the occasion of important international events, including Arco Madrid and SP-Arte in San Paolo.
Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa
The Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa was founded over a century ago thanks to the wishes of a generous and forward-thinking woman who was able to foresee the goals and current prerogatives of Italian institutions involved in promoting the work of emerging artists.
At the end of a life largely dedicated to supporting the then newly formed Italian nation, Felicita Bevilacqua (1822-1899), widow of General Giuseppe La Masa, decided to leave the Palazzo Ca’ Pesaro to the City of Venice on the condition that it should be used to assist the artists who are often excluded from the main exhibitions.
In the last ten years at the BLM, 1,200 artists have shown their work. There have been 218 exhibitions, over 50 catalogues published and hundreds of posters, invitations and brochures. There are three main aspects to the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa’s programme:
Organising exhibitions for living artists of international fame, to provide significant opportunities for engaging with important contemporary artists to the local area, making it part of the circuit of international exhibition centres, such as the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Whitechapel Gallery, as well as places that host artistic residencies, like the Camden Art Centre in London and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
Activities dedicated to young artists, like the Mostra Collettiva Annuale (Annual Collective Show), now in its 98th year, the granting of bursaries to the most promising young artists, the annual bursary holders’ exhibition and the awarding of 12 Artist’s Studios for a period of one year.
In addition, there are individual and collective shows for young artists organised in association with universities, academies, exhibition centres and other Italian and foreign institutions.
Information and promotion activities, such as l’Archivio Giovani Artisti (the Young Artists Archive), created in association with the Viafarini centre in Milan and the library specialising in contemporary art. Furthermore, BLM also edits many publications alongside the institution’s historic archive.
The Fondazione organises seminars, workshops, conventions and meetings that bring together internationally renowned artists, critics and theorists.
