ALA ART PRIZE 2024

ALA PRESENTS THE FOURTH EDITION OF THE ALA ART PRIZE, AN AWARD DEDICATED TO CONTEMPORARY ART

The fourth edition of the ALA Art Prize is ready to start. A project by ALA For Art promoted by the ALA Group on initiative of entrepreneurs Fulvio Scannapieco and Vittorio Genna, with an open call dedicated to Italian and foreign artists and collectives of artists aged between 18 and 40 operating in Italy.

The call is open until April 10, 2024 and it is possible to apply for free by filling out the online form on the website www.alacorporation.com/ala-for-art-prize.

PURPOSE
The aim of the Call is to choose an original artistic project with no technical constraints but compatible with ALA Headquarter premises, and in line with the Company’s values and mission.

REQUIREMENTS FOR PARTICIPATION

• The call is open to all artists of Italian or foreign nationality, born or resident in Italy who operate or have operated over the last 5 years on the Italian territory 6 7 8 and who accept this regulation without reservation.
• Participants must be between 18 and 40 years old. In the case of collectives of 9 artists, the requirement applies to at least one member of the group.
• Participants must have at least 3 solo or group exhibitions held in the last 5 years in a public or private museum, gallery, cultural center, or verified and recognized foundation. In the case of collectives of artists, the requirement applies to the group and not to the individual member.

THEME:

For the 2024 edition, the ALA Art Prize aims to reflect on the nuances of meaning in the concept of care by proposing “Notes on Taking Care” as the subject matter of the award.

What does taking care mean today? Of oneself, of the other from oneself, of things, of art?

«To Care», «To Cure»,  listening to needs, allowing time. It is an emotional work, a re-generative action of physical and symbolic bodies.

The open call is intended as a moment of reflection to explore the phenomenology of care through visual languages. Without hesitating to investigate the risks related to excessive care. Wherever attention turns into control and love gets lost in exclusiveness, whenever the defence of an alleged body integrity – private and collective – raises boundaries and the individual well-being overcomes a sound principle of community, taking care runs the risk of standing for a misleading metaphor of exclusion.

The 2024 edition invites us to imagine ‘taking care’ as a social, cultural and political experience, stimulating reflection on power dynamics, on the  bonds of mutual dependency and on the creation of a community based on sharing and collective care: practices as narratives, in order to reconsider the boundaries between the public dimension and the private sphere, offering new perspectives on care as a form of investigation and documentation on human relationships, vulnerability and attention to other people’s lives.

And, thereby, annotations on things to do – or to remember – to take care  as a medium for critical analysis, as a multidimensional move, a daily action capable of weaving together the plots of individual lives and the interconnected networks of global society.

Besides reflecting on this edition’s theme, artists will present a site-specific original project, purposely designed to be placed in one of the common spaces at ALA Headquarters, in the Mediterranean Theater of the Mostra d’Oltremare in Naples.

The winning project will be awarded a €10,000.00 cash prize in order to cover the production costs of the work. Also in this edition, the artist will be granted €2,000.00 fee. A publication with the winning work and the activities of ALA For Art during the year will complete and enrich the project.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF PARTICIPATION

• The Call is open from 12:00 p.m. on February 13th to 12:00 p.m. on April 10th 2024 (Italian time).
• Applications arriving after the aforementioned deadline will not be accepted.
• Under penalty of exclusion, participants can only submit one project/artwork.
• Participation is free.
• To apply, the candidate must fill out the online participation form available here.
• In the event that a collective of artists is applying, the form must be filled out by a single member identified as the contact person, who will tick the “Collective contact person” box, thereby relieving ALA from any liability towards the other members of the group.
• Furthermore, the CV’s and identity documents of each individual member must be sent bearing hand-written signature.
• Documentation received through channels other than the one identified above will not be taken into account.
• Under penalty of exclusion, the artwork or project presented must be original.
• The work or project presented must be in line with the theme specified in ART. 2.
• Any form of the visual arts is allowed, with no technical constraints.
• The artwork or project must be produced bearing in mind the specific nature and designated use of the spaces.
• The proposed artworks must therefore be compatible with the features of the workspace

Like previous editions, the jury will consist of international critics and curators such as Giovanni Carmine, Director of the Kunst Halle of San Gallo and curator of Art Basel Unlimited, Eugenio Viola, Chief Curator at MAMBO – Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá and Alessia Volpe, Exhibition Manager at the Bourse de Commerce — Pinault Collection in Paris.

The winning work will become part of the ALA Corporate Art Collection, joining the works of Bea Bonafini, Acque, Amare (2023), Alberto Tadiello, Luciferasi (2022), and Mariangela Levita, UP (2021), respectively awarded in the third, second and first edition of the ALA Art Prize, along with the works by Giulia Piscitelli, Andrea Bolognino, Antonio Della Guardia and Giorgia Garzilli — acquired thanks to the ALA For Art Acquisition Program in 2023 and 2022 with the purpose of enriching the ALA collection.

Website link: https://www.alacorporation.com/ala-for-art-prize/