Artist
Born in Cortona, Italy, in 1988, Giulia Cenci lives and works in Amsterdam and Tuscany.
In her process of observation, she selects elements that are irrelevant details of industrial objects or parts of our environment, capable of expressing vulnerabilities, promises and failures of human activity. The consequences of our past, the structure of society and the conditions of the self in a contemporaneity defined by products and avatars, suggest to the artist visions of hypothetical habitats. Here, discarded objects and natural elements merge with animal and human prototypes, organized in serial groups or isolated in search of subjectivity. The figures and the structures form environments devoid of logical hierarchical order. Concepts such as species or gender are questioned, in an attempt to overthrow a real form of dominance of a group or individual over another. These installations show a constant sense of duplicity: belonging to forms and designs known and repeated in our present and an exasperation of sculptural actions, in an attempt to obtain strongly impure objects. Technique and technology, repetition, similarity and the idea of reproduction populate surroundings, where the visitors’ bodies often are part, becoming additional matter reacting with “the rest”.
Her works have been exhibited at the 59th Venice Biennale: The Milk of Dreams, the High Line in New York, Mudam in Luxemburg, Goldsmiths Center for Contemporary Art in London, the MAXXI in Rome, the Centro Pecci in Prato and the Palazzo Re Rebaudengo in Guarene. She has participated in myriad solo and group shows all over the world.
She was awarded the 21st Premio Cairo in 2022 and the Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel 2019. She was also shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize 2023-2024 and for the MAXXI Bvlgari Prize 2020.
Giulia Cenci, Photo Giorgio Perottino
*Art for Tomorrow Talks at Milano Art Week, April 4
