Naples 30th May 2025 – The Fondazione Donnaregina per le arti contemporanee – museo Madre opens to the public on Friday 30 May 2025 (6 PM) with the exhibition Digital Ghosts, which showcases the artworks by the winners of the second edition of the Paul Thorel Prize until 14 July 2025. Organized in collaboration with the Paul Thorel Foundation, the exhibition supports emerging Italian talent in contemporary art, with a focus on digital aesthetics and research.
The winners—prominent figures on both the Italian and international institutional art scenes—are: Alterazioni Video, a collective of five artists founded in 2004 (Paolo Luca Barbieri Marchi, Alberto Caffarelli, Matteo Erenbourg, Andrea Masu, and Giacomo Porfiri), based between New York, Berlin, Palermo, and Faro; Eva & Franco Mattes, an artist duo working since the 1990s under the pseudonym 0100101110101101.org, based between Milan and New York; and Anna Franceschini (born in Pavia in 1979), who lives in Milan.
Their proposals were selected by a committee of experts, art critics and contemporary art curators, composed of Marianna Vecellio (curator at Castello di Rivoli), Edoardo Bonaspetti (co-director of Ordet, Milan, and artistic director of the Henraux Foundation), Luca Lo Pinto (director of MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome until December 2024), and Giovanna Manzotti (freelance curator). The jury consisted of the selection committee joined by Antonio Carloni (deputy director of Gallerie d’Italia, Turin), Sara Cosulich (director of the Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin), and Sara Dolfi Agostini (curator at the Paul Thorel Foundation, Naples), and chaired by Guido Costa (president of the Paul Thorel Foundation, Naples).
The Paul Thorel Prize—the first initiative dedicated to the Italian creative scene with a focus on digital arts—identifies contemporary imagery as its primary medium of research. Awarded annually to three artists, the prize includes a one-month residency at the Foundation’s space in Naples to support the creation of a new, original work. This is followed by a group exhibition at the partner institution and the publication of three artist’s books in a dedicated series by NERO Editions.
The artworks on view—created during a residency that ‘reactivates’ the spaces and tools once used by Paul Thorel, a pioneer of electronic imagery who passed away in 2020—are presented for the first time through the exhibition Digital Ghosts, curated by Sara Dolfi Agostini. The show unfolds across the museum’s second-floor left wing and includes Anna Franceschini’s new performance Videogiochi Napoli (2025), featuring sound by Fabrizio Vatieri, which will take place in the Sala Madre at 7.00 PM on May 30, 2025, during the public opening of the exhibition.
