NICCOLÒ MASINI
In Residence:
November – December 24, 2022
Discipline:
Artist, Filmmaker
Country:
Italy
About
Niccolò Masini is an Italian artist, filmmaker, and researcher whose work stands at the intersection of narrative and craft, but also poetry and anthropology. His work seeks to provide a vehicle for observing tangible and intangible migratory processes, mappings, and traces in relation to borders and colonization, together with the economic and political forces that have imposed precarious labor conditions and attenuated other histories. Entwining moving images, creative methodology, experimental ethnography, and teaching, his research engages with the limits of the possible and the impossible by recognizing a starting point in the re-discovery of the indeterminate, the unknown, the unquantifiable. He holds a BFA in Animation and Illustration from the European Institute of Design – Milan (2011), a BFA in Audiovisual Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy of Amsterdam (2015), and an MFA in art praxis and research at the DAI / Arnhem (2021). Winner of numerous prizes, competitions, grants, and residencies, his work has been exhibited internationally and in 2018, he was awarded the Best Young Artist Of The Year (Painting & Sculpture) by the GAMMA competition and GM conference of Tokyo.
WORK
FRANGIPANI
The Traveling Flower. Islands to Islands
On 19th December, the artworks of Elia900 and Niccolò Masini will activate Yayasan Bali Purnati’s grounds and spaces. This showcase is the result and restitution of their research and investigation during “Frangipani/The traveling flower. Islands to Islands”, a long-term Residency Exchange Program between Indonesia and Italy.
This bilateral initiative facilitates the synergy between multidisciplinary artists interested in cross-cultural interactions. It promotes on-site theoretical and practical research of two artists+one curator from Italy in Indonesia (2022) and two artists+one curator from Indonesia in Italy (2023). The program, directed by Elettra Bottazzi and Restu Kusumaningrum, is hosted and supported by their cultural centers: Amaneï (Salina, Aeolian Islands, Sicily) and Yayasan Bali Purnati and Losari Foundation (Bali and Central Java, Indonesia).
Under the support of the IIC Jakarta (Italian Cultural Institute), the 19th December event will showcase the developments of the project and the end of the first exchange cycle involving the Italian participant artists Elia900 and Niccolò Masini and the curator Elettra Bottazzi. Through the explorations of local stories and traditions, the artworks underline the main aspects of their transdisciplinary learning and process-based experimentations. The multilayered creation of meanings and minglings are the effects of the encounter between environments and cultures, suggesting instead a dialogue made of similarities and crossbreeding.
In 2024, the outcome of both residencies will manifest in a group show, which will gather the artists’ and curators’ research and works. The exhibition will unfold the collected experiences into a plurality of voices and gazes, revealing the curators’ and artists’ ability to match different poetics and backgrounds, questioning “from which point of view we see” since our gaze is never neutral but often cultural.
“Frangipani/The traveling flowers”’ project aims to engage the involved participants in diverse environments and traditions, fostering exchanges and dialogues between landscapes and cultures. The islands of Java/Bali and Aeolian Islands/Sicily are far apart, but in these volcanic territories, the Frangipani flower blooms abundantly. The artists and their works, which have always traveled the world, are like seeds that flourish even in the most remote places, reminding us that culture, like nature, knows no boundaries.
