JURY FOR THE VILLA ROMANA PRIZE 2022

Antonia Alampi is a curator, researcher, writer, and director of the new Schöpflin Foundation-funded Spore Initiative, which will open in Berlin in 2021, and co-curator of the Sonsbeek Quadrennial. Previously, she was artistic co-director of SAVVY Contemporary from 2016. Between 2017 and mid-2019, she was curator of Extra City Kunsthal in Antwerp, where she realized a three-year program on European citizenship. In 2016, together with Iliana Fokianaki, she initiated the research project Future Climates, which explored how economic flows shape and determine the work of small initiatives in contexts with weak public infrastructure for arts and culture. From 2012 to 2015, she was curator of the Beirut Exhibition House in Cairo. There she conceived and directed the educational project The Imaginary School Program (2014 /2015). Between 2009 and 2011 she co-founded the art initiative Opera Rebis and worked for Studio Stefania Miscetti (Rome), Manifesta 7 (South Tyrol) and the Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea of Trento.

Hiwa K, an artist born in 1975 in northern Iraqi Kurdistan, reflects on his own migration history in his video works and installations, transferring it into poetically and narratively multilayered works. The question of geographical location, the search for orientation, or becoming aware of oneself plays a leading role in many of his works. He continuously criticizes the art education system and the professionalization of art practice as well as the myth of the individual artist. Many of his works have a strong collective and participatory dimension. Hiwa K has participated in various group exhibitions such as Manifesta 7, Trento (2008), La Triennale, Intense Proximity, Paris (2012), the Edgware Road Project at the Serpentine Gallery, London (2012), the Venice Biennale (2015) and documenta 14, Kassel /Athens (2017). Recent solo exhibitions include the New Museum, NYC (2018), S.M.A.K., Ghent (2018), Kunstverein Hannover (2018), Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw (2018), and Van Every /Smith Galleries in North Carolina, USA. In 2016 Hiwa K received the Arnold Bode Prize and the Ernst Schering Foundation Art Award and had a solo exhibition at KW, Berlin (2017).