For the first time in the Italian university scene, an artist residency project kicks off: the University of Trieste opens its doors to eleven artists from the contemporary scene, hosted for a week in the Student House.
The objective of the initiative, titled #SBLAD - Shine Bright Like A Diamond, is to tell through the artist's gaze the richness and complexity inherent in every discipline, the uniqueness and multifacetedness of the human being. The heart of the project, one of the university's flagship Centennial initiatives, will coincide with the week of Nov. 6-14..
The artists will get to live in close contact with the students, faculty and researchers of the University: each of them - two artists work in pairs - will, in fact, be hosted by one of the ten Departments from which they will draw inspiration to create an original artistic work.
Several techniques will be used, particularly installation, but also drawing, sound design, sculpture, photography and painting.
The first contacts - a source of inspiration for the artists - took place starting on Monday, October 23, with visits to the Departments, the most representative places of the University and meetings with those who live them daily. Already in themselves places of knowledge, the Departments will be transformed into incubators of free and shared thoughts, reservoirs for artistic suggestions, transversal dialogues and short circuits between disciplines. Working among and with students and faculty, young talents will be inspired by themes, research, and ideas. The stimuli developed, such as the concept of care, biodiversity, the future of humankind, for example, will come to life in a series of works targeted and created in special spaces, the "artist rooms," identified on the different levels of the central building's stairways, a symbolic place of great visual and communicative impact.
The vernissage is scheduled for Tuesday, November 14 at 6 p.m.; the exhibition will be open for free admission from November 15 until December 2024.
The #SBLAD - Shine Bright Like A Diamond project has been realized with the collaboration of ERPAC - Regional Authority for Cultural Heritage and ARDiS - Regional Agency for the Right to Study Friuli-Venezia GiuliaThe title, a quotation from a famous song, is a play on words that intentionally refers to Remember and Shine, the general catalog of the Athenaeum's entire body of artistic works. The creations will be on public display from November 15, 2023, and will implement the collection acquired during the National Exhibition of Contemporary Italian Painting dating back to 1953.
"Artist residencies applied to the university environment, with the original modalities that we strongly desired at UniTS, are a formidable tool to express the strong symbiosis that binds science and art, two sides of the same coin - stressed Roberto Di Lenarda – "The works that the artists will create will also testify to the strong interpenetration between knowledge, which is the hallmark of higher education experiences. I would like to thank in particular the FVG Region and ERPAC for believing in and supporting the project from the beginning and ARDiS, which will allow the artists to fully live the university experience."
"On the occasion of the Centennial of the University of Trieste, the Department, through the Friuli-Venezia Giulia Regional Cultural Heritage Authority (ERPAC), promotes artistic production within public places considering the presence of the contemporary in public art collections essential. On this occasion it does so by using artist residencies and site-specific projects that will end with the production of new artworks and installations resulting from the sharing of practices and knowledge between artists, teachers and students, in the spirit of relationship," - continues Mario Anzil, Vice-President and Regional Councillor for Culture and Sports.
The selected artists are Umberto Chiodi, Antonio Della Marina and Alessandra Zucchi, Giulia Iacolutti, Nicola Martini, Ryts Monet, Ruben Montini, Michele Seffino, Michele Spanghero, Aryan Ozmaei, and Alba Zari.
The project is curated by Eva Comuzzi, a contemporary art historian, lecturer and curator who specializes in the work of young generations of artists, who recalls, "Residencies have always given artists the opportunity to confront each other and the place that hosts them. In addition, in this specific case they will be enriched by a direct confrontation with the teachers of the various departments going to further implement their research and experimentation. So not only will works be created for the final exhibition and for the collection, but in several cases the groundwork has already been laid for the birth of further works."
The initiative will then find further development and enrichment in the span of 2024 with some site-specific interventions by four artists from the area - Serse Roma, Manuela Sedmach, Antonio Sofianopulo, Elisa Vladilo - who will go to work in two other particularly evocative places of the University as well as important places in Trieste, rich in culture: the San Giovanni Comprensorio, where the Department of Life Sciences is based, and the Archive of Writers and Regional Culture.