The interviews of Art Rights Prize
Interview with Carolina Ciuti, Curator and Artistic Director of the video art festival LOOP Barcelona – Head of Jury of the Video Art of Art Rights Prize
Art Rights Magazine, Media Partner of Art Rights Prize, the first International Digital Prize for Artists 3.0, presents every week the Judges that make up the Jury of Experts of the Art System and the Art Market.
In the perspective of comparison and meeting between Artists and Art Professionals, the Jury of Art Rights Prize boasts the participation of 15 Judges who offer a personal and professional preview of the importance of Art Awards, advice on the best way to submit their candidacy together with the motivations that should push an artist to participate in an art award
Among the narrative and creative forms used by artists, Video Art is the medium of our time, which finds in technology its form, its construction and the diffusion of a message.
Artists’ videos have gone, over time, from a self-production to a real almost cinematic production with very wide circuits, where foundations, collectors and gallerists are often involved, finding space in special fairs and festivals, such as LOOP Barcelona, among the most important for the sector.
Chairing the Jury of the Video Art of Art Rights Prize we have Carolina Ciuti, Contemporary Art Curator and current Artistic Director of the video art festival LOOP in Barcelona.
In this interview Carolina tells what should be the role of an Art Award in the career of an emerging or established artist, because the difference is there, and what she would like to find in the nominations. When she has to judge, Ciuti says: “I do not pay much attention to elements such as seniority or prestige, but rather to the quality of the work presented and the dialogue that this establishes with the artist’s general poetics.
Impossible then not to keep these words in mind when the Artist chooses to apply for the Art Rights Prize…
Carolina Ciuti is curator of contemporary art. She graduated in History and Protection of Artistic Heritage at the University of Florence and then specialized in Contemporary Art with a Master at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London.
She is currently the artistic director of the LOOP video art festival in Barcelona, where she has worked with internationally recognized artists such as Regina de Miguel, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Aleksandra Mir, Muntadas, Steina and Woody Vasulka and Anton Vidokle.
His curatorial projects have been exhibited at Cinéphèmère-FIAC Paris, Filmoteca de Catalunya, Fabra i Coats-Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, MACBA and Real Cercle Artístic.
She has published I Have A Friend Who Knows Someone Who Bought a Video, Once (Mousse Publishing, 2016) and Before The Name: a book on an itinerant performance project. (RAM Editions, 2018).
She was a contributor to the magazine La Maleta de Portbou and the publishing house Istituto Italiano Edizioni Atlas. In 2017 she co-founded the collective CRiB, with which she creates hybrid proposals between visual arts, theater and performance.
1.For you, what importance does an Art Prize have in an artist’s career?
I believe that the function of an award and its impact on an artist’s career takes on completely different values depending on the nature of the recognition and the trajectory of the artist in question.
At the beginning of a career it can mean an increase in visibility and access to resources and material conditions difficult to obtain otherwise; at a more advanced stage it can instead become a factor contributing to increase the “cultural value” attributed to a work, or a tool aimed at the realization of ambitious projects (in this case I am referring, more specifically, to a production prize).
Among the prizes that in my opinion are of particular importance are those that combine the final recognition (be it economic or exclusively symbolic) with a process of training and building contacts for the artist.
More generally, I believe that the Quality Awards, or rather those conceived with the real intent of CON-tribute, can play an important role of dynamization, in an increasingly precarious artistic ecosystem without social structures to protect those who create.
In this regard, I would like to mention the not too distant episode of the Turner Prize 2019, in which the four nominated artists decided to divide the final prize in equal parts: an important gesture of political strength, but above all of economic solidarity in the face of increasingly complex conditions.
2.What would you recommend to an artist who wants to participate in an Art Prize?
Probably the same things I try to remind myself when I prepare an application for a curating or research competition:
1) Evaluate whether the award can contribute positively to your training and/or positioning, from a conceptual, economic and future outlets point of view;
2) understand exactly the characteristics and purpose of the award in question, in order to send a relevant application;
3) contextualize the candidate project and explain its importance in the present time: why here? why now? If the objectives of a proposal and its contemporary need are clear, those who will have the task of evaluating it can only be involved.
3.What factors do you take into consideration when judging a nomination for an Art Award?
As I also explained in part in the previous question, among the most important factors that I look for in a project there is certainly the ability to generate in the viewer multiple cues for reflection on the time we live.
I do not consider originality and innovation particularly important, but rather sensitivity and critical capacity on the part of the artist in interpreting the debates of the present moment and reworking them in a personal key.
For this very reason, I do not pay much attention to elements such as seniority or prestige, but rather to the quality of the work presented and the dialogue that this establishes with the artist’s general poetics.
To try to summarize, a proposal that is clear and coherent in its motivations and objectives, pertinent to the context of the candidacy and “urgent” will certainly have more possibilities.
If you are an artist, what are you waiting for?
APPLY NOW, TILL 30th NOVEMBRE 2020 to Art Rights Prize, the first international digital art prize.
