Will Gian Maria Tosatti be the artist of the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2022?

Will Gian Maria Tosatti be the star of the Italian Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale? Rumors about the name of the Roman artist and journalist, born in 1980, as the sole name of the pavilion curated by Eugenio Viola (in fact, he will be the next curator of the Italian Pavilion, announced a few days ago by Culture Minister Dario Franceschini) are becoming increasingly insistent: Viola has long collaborated with Tosatti (he has curated several of his exhibitions), who could therefore enjoy the entire 1,200 square meters of the Arsenale’s Tese delle Vergini, the space that traditionally hosts the Biennale’s Italian exhibition.

But there is not only the well-established collaboration between Viola and Tosatti behind the rumors that already virtually give the Roman’s name as a certainty: Tosatti, a fresh winner of the Italian Council thanks to whose support he realized a major exhibition on the world at the end of human history in Bergamo and Kiev, has often worked with large-scale environmental installations (some examples: The Kingdoms of Hunger, My Heart is Empty as a Mirror, Land of the Last Sky, Miracle and many others, with the last two moreover curated by Eugenio Viola). Large site-specific installations are a mainstay of Tosatti’s work and have involved entire buildings and urban areas, also involving the communities that inhabit the places where his works come to life. In addition, the themes he addresses (his researches focus mainly on the concept of identity, investigated under the political profile and under the spiritual profile), could find adequate correspondences in the curator’s ideas.

Tosatti today lives between Naples and New York. Trained at the Centro di Sperimentazione e Ricerca Teatrale in Pontedera, he began his research combining architecture and visual arts in 2005, immediately beginning to create large-scale in situ installations (such as the Devotions of 2005-2011, installations designed for ten buildings in Rome). During his career, in addition to the 2019 Italian Council, he has won numerous awards: the Talent Prize in 2014 (and in the same year received a mention at the Furla Prize), the Rotary-Brera Prize in 2015, the Ettore Fico Foundation Prize and the New York Prize in 2016, and the Cape Town Prize in 2018.

His works have been exhibited at the Hessel Museum of CCS BARD (New York, 2014), MADRE Museum in Naples (2016), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2011), National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome (2017), Petah Tikva Museum of Art in Israel (2017), Archaeological Museum in Salerno (2014), American Academy in Rome (2013), Villa Croce Museum in Genoa (2012), Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome (2008), Chelsea Art Museum in New York (2009). His best-known work exhibited in an Italian public space is the installation My dreams they’ll never surrender located in Naples ’s Castel Sant’Elmo: dating from 2014, it is a work dedicated to those who “have spent their lives in prison because of their ideas and who from a cell have been able to change the History that seemed to have beaten them,” the artist’s website reads. “These are men who in a prison were able to generate dreams of freedom and justice that have inspired generations. Men like Antonio Gramsci, Luisa Sanfelice, Nelson Mandela or Rubin ’Hurricane’ Carter.”

Pictured: Gian Maria Tosatti. Photo by Severina Venckute

Will Gian Maria Tosatti be the artist of the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2022?

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.