Madre is hosting the second exhibition of the Meridiana Prize, Living Collapse, curated by Samuele Piazza (Parma, 1988), featuring the artists Andrea Bolognino (Naples, 1991), Effe Minelli (Pompeii, 1986), and Raffaela Naldi Rossano (Naples, 1990). This exhibition marks a significant departure from the previous project, curated by Gabriella Rebello Kolandra, reflecting the variety of approaches and languages the Prize aims to foster, while maintaining certain lines of continuity in terms of artistic research. In this case as well, the curatorial framework is shaped around a historical reference that opens up a specific perspective through which to interrogate the complexity of the present. The context is that of a reinterpretation of the nativity scene tradition, starting from Jimmie Durham’s work Presepio, in the Madre collection. The exhibition adopts the Neapolitan nativity scene as a critical device, highlighting the affinities between this art form and certain sensibilities of contemporary research. What emerges is a layered and non-linear reading of tradition, filtered through the practices of the invited artists, whose works resonate with one another and with a traditional nativity scene created in the museum’s galleries by master craftsman Giuseppe Ercolano. Setting out from this framework, through languages ranging from drawing to sculpture and installation, the three artists develop new works that give shape to an unstable landscape, marked by tensions between construction and ruin, the human and the non-human, order and proliferation.
Sponsored by museo Madre and Amici del Madre, with the support of Antony Morato and Fondazione Tridama and curated by Mario Francesco Simeone, the Meridiana Prize aims to promote curatorial research and the emerging art scene with a specific focus on Campania and Southern Italy, fostering dialogue across generations, contexts, and a range of different artistic languages. The first edition, titled Ogni cosa è tutte le cose and inspired by Elio Vittorini’s novel Conversation in Sicily, received 64 submissions and was won by curators Gabriella Rebello Kolandra (Rio de Janeiro, 1993) and Samuele Piazza (Parma, 1988).
