BPER Award
The 2024 BPER Bank Award, an acquisition devoted to enhancing feminine themes (regardless of the winning artist’s gender), is part of the BPER Group’s traditional value structure, focused on inclusion and against gender violence and united with the promotion of culture and art for the general public. BPER will proudly display the winning work in its exhibition space to provide visibility to the work and to the artist after the conclusion of Arte Fiera.
With over 20 thousand employees and more than 5 million customers, the BPER Bank Group is one of Italy’s largest bank groups. It has always supported projects aimed at promoting all forms and expressions of culture. BPER Bank Gallery was created in 2017: not just a place, but a wide-ranging project that safeguards, conserves, and presents one of Italy's largest corporate collections, with about one thousand art works. The Gallery exemplifies the mission of the BPER brand: support – with real, constantly evolving initiatives, such as exhibits and events – an active, open, stimulating culture that creates links with local areas and among people.
Jury:
Flavia Mazzarella, Chairperson of BPER Banca
Cecilia Canziani, independent curator and art historian
Chiara Bertola, Director of GAM, Turin
Candidates:
- Chiara Camoni, Senza titolo #11, 2023 (SpazioA, B17)
- Stefania Galegati, isola #49, 2021 (Francesco Pantaleone Arte Contemporanea, A63)
- Marta Roberti, Self-portrait hugging myself with pangolin haircut, 2020 (z2o Sara Zanin, A33)
Winner: Stefania Galegati
Title of work: isola #49, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 148 x 256 cm
Gallery: Francesco Pantaleone Arte Contemporanea, A63
Motivation: The Island Tales project presented at Arte Fiera 2024 is a series of paintings by Stefania Galegati that accompanies, with daily artistic practice, a group action: the acquisition of the island by a group composed solely of women. Stefania Galegati has been portraying the island of women for four years, transcribing excerpts from Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex on the canvas. The reading, transcription, and painting closely accompany the group project. “An island owned by women represents an outpost of thought that involves safeguarding the territory, relational and generative correctness, thereby rethinking the world and language, thought and action, over and above patriarchal systems. An island can be a mixer of poetic gestures, of real and possible worlds, of shared lives and thoughts” (from a conversation between Stefania Galegati and Valentina Greco).