IMAGINA – XXVII edizione della Biennale d’arte contemporanea di Gubbio

Bea Bonafini (b. 1990, Bonn) is an interdisciplinary artist based between London and Barcelona. Through painting, tapestry, ceramics and drawing, she delves into the intersection of humanity with other forms of existence. Her interests are in the cyclical nature of materials and symbols as well as the revival of cross-cultural mythologies and their contemporary and personal reconfigurations. She is also interested in the emotional landscape of colour. Recently, her research has focused on Mediterranean narratives related to symbolism, collaboration, hybridity and movement.

Bonafini’s works act as transcendental openings, presenting swirling, fragmented and multi-layered scenarios that are both optimistic and tender. Expanding and contracting from the monumental to the intimate, her pieces become protected spheres, serving as receptacles for a lost spirituality. Strongly influenced by archaeology and literature, her work celebrates new and unexpected combinations and juxtapositions, where boundaries and identities co-exist and fuse.

Bea Bonafini graduated from MA painting from the Royal College of Art in London (2016) and BA Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art in London (2014). She was artist-in-residence at the Art Explora Mediterranean Project (2024) and the British School at Rome (2020); commissions include site-specific works for Manifesta 15, Spain (2024); ALA Prize, Italy (2023); Artocène Biennial, France (2023); Palazzo Abatellis, Italy (2022); Meta HQ, UK (2022); La Berlugane-Maleki residence, France; Maison Estelle, UK (2018); and Jonköping Council, Sweden (2018).

Recent solo exhibitions: Acque Amare, ALA Art Foundation (2023); Il Chiostro Animato, Museo di Roma in Trastevere, Rome (2022); A Monstrous Fruit, Setareh, Berlin (2022); Animals Of Your Lips, Bosse & Baum, London (2022); Unearthly, Nosbaum Reding, Luxembourg (2022); Ghosts for a Post-Modern Tale, LAAA, Mexico City (2022); Luna Piena (Stomaco Vuoto), Renata Fabbri, Milan (2021); Sfiorare Fantasmi, Eduardo Secci, Florence (2021); Twin Waves, Operativa, Rome (2019); Chimère, Chloe Salgado, Paris (2018); Shed Shreds, Lychee One, London (2018); and Dovetail’s Nest, Zabludowicz Collection, London (2017).

Recent group exhibitions: Diario Notturno, MAXXI, L’Aquila (2023); Italian Painting Today, Triennale Milano (2023); Imagina, Biennale di Gubbio (2023); Horizon of the Void, Artocène, Chamonix (2023); Coppa di Stelle nel Cerchio del Sole, Palazzo Abatellis Museum, Palermo (2022); Fondazione per l’Arte, Rome (2022); Kristen Hjellegjerde, London (2022); The Artsy Vanguard Fourth Edition, Miami (2021); Fondazione Sandretto, Guarene (2020); Premio Cairo, Palazzo Reale Milan (2019); and Memories Arrested in Space, The Italian Cultural Institute, London (2018).

Recent solo exhibitions: Acque Amare, ALA Art Foundation (2023); Il Chiostro Animato, Museo di Roma in Trastevere, Rome (2022); A Monstrous Fruit, Setareh, Berlin (2022); Animals Of Your Lips, Bosse & Baum, London (2022); Unearthly, Nosbaum Reding, Luxembourg (2022); Ghosts for a Post-Modern Tale, LAAA, Mexico City (2022); Luna Piena (Stomaco Vuoto), Renata Fabbri, Milan (2021); Sfiorare Fantasmi, Eduardo Secci, Florence (2021); Twin Waves, Operativa, Rome (2019); Chimère, Chloe Salgado, Paris (2018); Shed Shreds, Lychee One, London (2018); and Dovetail’s Nest, Zabludowicz Collection, London (2017).

Recent group exhibitions: Diario Notturno, MAXXI, L’Aquila (2023); Italian Painting Today, Triennale Milano (2023); Imagina, Biennale di Gubbio (2023); Horizon of the Void, Artocène, Chamonix (2023); Coppa di Stelle nel Cerchio del Sole, Palazzo Abatellis Museum, Palermo (2022); Fondazione per l’Arte, Rome (2022); Kristen Hjellegjerde, London (2022); The Artsy Vanguard Fourth Edition, Miami (2021); Fondazione Sandretto, Guarene (2020); Premio Cairo, Palazzo Reale Milan (2019); and Memories Arrested in Space, The Italian Cultural Institute, London (2018).

Lulù Nuti’s multi-disciplinary approach is based on the use of materials as vectors of a different sensibility and language. Questioning our relationship with space, nature and the environment, her works reflect the feelings of powerlessness and responsibility of our time. In her quest for hybridity and contrasts, the artist combines plaster, concrete and metal with natural elements, forcing materials to coexist in an organic whole. In this way, her works contain multiple and contradictory interactions, between fragility and resistance, rupture and solidity, presence and effacement.

After graduating from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Paris in 2012, Lulù Nuti has exhibited in Italy and abroad in public and private institutions including Fondazione Pescheria, Pesaro, IT (2024); Fondazione Nicola del Roscio, Rome (2023); Gubbio Biennial, Italy; Palazzo Collicola, Spoleto, Italy; Musée des Beaux Arts d’Angers, France; British School at Rome (2023); Parco Archerologico dell’Appia Antica, Rome; Palazzo Marescalchi Belli, Rome (2022); Postmasters Rome (2020); Italian Cultural Center, New-Delhi, India (2019); La Panacée (MFW, MO.CO., Montpellier, 2018); Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, FR (2014); Museo CAMUSAC (Rilevamenti 2, Cassino, 2020); Biwako Biennale (Fairy Tale, Japan, 2012) and in private galleries including Galleria Alessandra Bonomo (Part 1, Rome, 2017); Galerie Italienne (La Musée, Paris, 2020); Renata Fabbri (SOTTO, Milano, 2022). In 2022 her sculpture Too much heat, nothing to eat travels around the world ( IIC New-York, USA; IIC Seoul, Corea; Changijang Museum of Contemporary Art, China ) with We Love Art, vision and creativity Made in Italy, a project promoted by Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and CDP, curated by Ludovico Pratesi and Marco Bassan.

Solo shows include the site-specific exhibition Sistema at archeological site Case Romane del Celio (Rome, 2015) and Calcare il Mondo at Galerie Chloé Salgado (Paris, 2018). In 2018 she founded the artistic duo LU.PA together with Pamela Pintus, an artistic identity that operates through performance actions and site-specific works.

Digging into the crevices of everyday experience and inspired by chance encounters with common objects, the works of Serena Vestrucci (b. Milan, 1986) interrogate and transform the ordinary through a diverse range of artistic processes and linguistic paradoxes. Fascinated by artefacts, situations, images, and materials picked out from everyday life (such as flags, pastels, fried squid, seasonal fruit), the artist turns these elements into the subject and raw material of her artistic experience. By modifying them and shifting them into fields of action different from their original context, Vestrucci draws attention to them, changing their appearance and filling them with new meanings, in an instantaneous and illusory poetics, barely visible and yet only apparently simple.
The outcome are works that, in their visual immediacy, subvert the perception of the work of art, changing its semantic value and inviting the viewer to rethink the way they observe and interpret their surroundings. Imbued with a subtle irony towards contemporaneity, Vestrucci’s works probe the obviousness of small things, giving back voice to what is often hidden, forgotten, or cast aside. Through a playful, yet blunt and provocative language, the artist elevates ambiguity to a necessary foundation for a more accurate understanding of reality.
After obtaining a BA from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, Vestrucci moved to Venice, where in 2011 was awarded a residency at the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation’s ateliers, and in 2013 obtained an MA in Design and Production of the Visual Arts at the IUAV University of Venice.

Selected solo exhibitions include Renata Fabbri, Milan (2021); FuoriCampo Gallery, Siena (2018); Gallery of Modern Art, Verona (2017); Archaeological Museum Antonio Salinas, Palermo (2017); Marsèlleria Permanent Exhibition, Milan (2016); Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art, Genoa (2015); and Otto Zoo Gallery, Milan (2013).

Her work has been featured in group shows at Stefan Gierowski Foundation, Warsaw (2022); Made in Cloister Foundation, Naples (2022); Imago Mundi Foundation, Treviso (2021); Pastificio Cerere Foundation, Rome (2020); Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art, Genoa (2020 and 2015); Palazzo Del Medico, Carrara (2020); Michetti Foundation Museum, Francavilla al Mare, Chieti (2020); Casa Testori, Novate Milanese (2019); Blitz, Valletta, Republic of Malta (2019); Italian Cultural Institute, New York (2018); Italian Cultural Institute, London (2018); Santa Maria della Scala Museum, Siena (2018); Palazzo Reale, Milan (2017 and 2015); Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, Venice (2017, 2012 and 2010); FRISE Künstlerhaus, Hamburg, (2014); Casa Masaccio, San Giovanni Valdarno (2014); Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Turin (2014); GAM Gallery of Modern Art, Milan (2012); Venetian Institute of Sciences, Humanities and Arts, Venice (2012); and Stedelijk Museum, The Netherlands (2011).

In 2017 she was awarded the 18th edition of Premio Cairo, and she was selected by the City of Milan to conceive and realise a permanent artwork in the frame of the ArtLine Milano public art commission.