American artist Namsal Siedlecki wins the 20th Cairo Prize.

American artist Namsal Siedlecki (Greenfield, 1986) is the winner of the 20th edition of the Cairo Prize. The artist won the 2019 edition of the prize with his work Heads: the award ceremony was held last night in Milan’s Palazzo Reale. Siedlecki’s sculpture was chosen by the jury composed of President Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (President Fondazione Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo of Turin) and jurors Mariolina Bassetti (President Christie’s Italia), Gabriella Belli (Director Fondazione MUVE, Musei Civici di Venezia), Luca Massimo Barbero (Director of theInstitute of Art History of the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice), Andrea Viliani (Director MADRE, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina in Naples), Gianfranco Maraniello (Director MART, Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto): they are joined for the first time by Emilio Isgrò, one of Italy’s most internationally renowned artists.

Siedlecki emerged from a shortlist of artists under 40 composed of Bea Bonafini, Guglielmo Castelli, Nataliya Chernakova, Emma Ciceri, Oscar Isaias Contrerars Rojas, Giulia Dall’Olio, Nebojš Despotović, Irene Fenara, Teresa Giannico, Délio Jasse, Kensuke Koike, Gao Lan, Edson Luli, Andrea Martinucci, Ruben Montini, Maki Ochoa, Greta Pilana, Alessandro Scarabello, Alessandro Teoldi. His Heads won with the following motivation: “because the memory of ancient myths merges plastically with contemporary consumer rituals, making sculpture a renewed alchemical process.” A prize of 25,000 euros goes to Siedlecki, as well as the cover of the next issue of Arte.

The American artist, who moved to Tuscany at a very young age (his mother is Italian), trained at theAcademy of Fine Arts in Carrara, graduating in sculpture, and now lives and works in Seggiano, in the province of Grosseto. In 2015 he won the fourth edition of the Moroso Prize and the Cy Twombly Italian Affiliated Fellow in Visual Arts at the American Academy in Rome, and the Gamec Prize at the Gamec Museum in Bergamo in 2019. Despite his young age, he has already exhibited in prestigious contexts: His most recent exhibitions include #80 #90 at Villa Medici, Rome (2019), participation in the VI Biennial of Young Art in Moscow (2018), Title IV at Villa Romana, Florence (2016), Integument in Frankfurt and Berlin (2016), TU35 at Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato (2015), Così Accade at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2014), and Crisalidi at Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Rome (2013).

With his work Teste (Trevis Maponos), Namsal Siedlecki, wrote critic Irene Sofia Comi, “achieves a subtle synthesis between contemporary rituals and millenary secrets, giving a new expressive and conceptual dimension to some Gallo-Roman votive offerings. In the artist’s vision, the votive figures left in the sacred areas of ancient temples are somehow comparable to the coins thrown in the Trevi Fountain in Rome: both have to do with ritual gestures and auspicious expressions. For these reasons, in the galvanization process used in the making of the work, Siedlecki exploited precisely those coins that, for various reasons, cannot be converted to any other use. The three sculptures formally recall Henry Moore’s soft lines and, although they belong to a timeless dimension, they maintain an inseparable link with the present, always remaining an active part of an ever-changing process: the oxidation of the copper, in fact, is beyond the artist’s control. The contact of the metal with the oxygen in the air thus produces different physical reactions, dynamically altering the appearance of each of the three heads. Almost as if they were desires stuck in limbo, waiting to come true.”

Pictured: Namsal Siedlecki, Heads (Trevis Maponos) (2019; three elements, electrodeposited copper, 30 x 12 x 21 cm each).

American artist Namsal Siedlecki wins the 20th Cairo Prize.

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