Biennale College Arte

On the occasion of the 59^th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, open to the public from April 23^rd to November 27^th 2022, 4 projects have been selected for the 1^st edition of Biennale College Arte 2021/22.

Over 250 young emerging artists under 30 from 58 countries around the world have joined the call for applications. More than half are women.

The 4 finalists are:

Simnikiwe Buhlungu
1995, Johannesburg, South Africa. Lives in Johannesburg, South Africa and Amsterdam, Netherlands

Ambra Castagnetti
1993, Genova, Italy. Lives in Milan, Italy

Andro Eradze
1993, Tbilisi, Georgia. Lives in Tbilisi, Georgia

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami
1993, Gutu, Zimbabwe. Lives in London, United Kingdom

Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Ambra Castagnetti, Andro Eradze, and Kudzanai-Violet Hwami will receive a grant of 25,000 euro for the realization of the final work.

The artworks will be presented, out of competition, as part of the 59^th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani.

Biennale College is the project by La Biennale di Venezia dedicated to training and supporting young artists in all the artistic fields and in the specific activities of La Biennale’s organizational structure. Already operating in the Cinema, Dance, Music, Theatre Departments and the Historic Archives, Biennale College was conceived with the ambition to promote young talents, offering them the opportunity to work closely with international mentors to develop “creations” that will become part of the programmes of the artistic Departments.

Simnikiwe Buhlungu
1995, Johannesburg, South Africa. Lives in Johannesburg, South Africa and Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Simnikiwe Buhlungu researches the production of knowledge, how it is disseminated, and by whom. Through film, sound, installation, and text, Buhlungu uses narratives and everyday phenomena to transport viewers into metaphorical and theoretical considerations of the ways we come to know and be in the world.

Ambra Castagnetti
1993, Genova, Italy. Lives in Milan, Italy
Ambra Castagnetti creates sculptures, videos, installations, and performances all driven by the desire to transform our relationship to our own bodies and to the other living beings that surround us. For Castagnetti, catharsis facilitates metamorphosis, and she often employs transformative processes in her sculpture-making.

Andro Eradze
1993, Tbilisi, Georgia. Lives in Tbilisi, Georgia
Andro Eradze is an artist working in film, photography, and installation, often introducing his lens-based works in surprising exhibition contexts. Inspired by contemporary theorists of interspecies relationships such as Donna Haraway and even John Berger, Eradze fills the frames of his works with plants and animals poised to exceed their boundaries. Eradze’s films take place between the human and the non-human, surveying myriad forms of animate life.

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami
1993, Gutu, Zimbabwe. Lives in London, United Kingdom
Kudzanai-Violet Hwami’s paintings reveal a deeply personal vision of Southern African life. Her canvases, replete with vibrantly pigmented oil paint, pastel, and silkscreen ink, draw upon her years growing up in Zimbabwe and South Africa, as well as the wider contemporary experience of seeing oneself and one’s influences refracted through screens. Deftly employing techniques of collage, Hwami’s paintings cohere in composition and palette, examining the ways we exist together and experience one another in an increasingly digital world.