The Fondazione Il Lazzaretto in Milan supports artistic research through the Lydia Prize for Contemporary Art open to artists under 35, curated by Claudia D’Alonzo. Now in its seventh edition, the prize continues the cultural partnership with PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea di Milano, one of the most authoritative public institutions in Italy dedicated to contemporary art, and its curator Diego Sileo. The Lydia Prize 2024 opens with an open call; applications may be submitted from 23 April until the deadline, set for 12 noon on 24 May.
The outcome will be decided by a jury of experts consisting of Silvia Costa, director and performer, Francesco D’Abbraccio, publisher and artist, Claudia D’Alonzo, lecturer and curator, Chiara Nuzzi, curator and editorial manager Fondazione ICA Milano, Diego Sileo, PAC curator. The artist will have a total grant of 5000 euros to develop his research that will culminate in a public return realised in collaboration with PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea di Milano during 2025.
The Fondazione Il Lazzaretto has been engaged since 2014 in the conception of participatory cultural projects under the banner of experimentation between visual arts, literature, photography, performing arts, and their respective contaminations. Every year, original projects are activated, signed by Lazzaretto’s creative team or by external professionals involved ad hoc and developed in synergy with the Foundation through residencies, workshops and laboratories. The result of the individual projects is presented to the public each year in November as part of The Plague Festival!
The Lydia Prize for Contemporary Art, active since 2018, is part of this quest. This year for the first time this prize also follows a thematic strand: Sensing Beyond Human. Like every edition, with the contribution of Fondazione Lydia Silvestri, the initiative is dedicated to the memory of the artist Lydia Silvestri, a pupil of Marino Marini, a sculptor who brought her research and experience also as a teacher all over the world, teaching at Bath Academy of Art in England in 1953-54 and 1963-64, in New York in 1960, in Hong Kong in 1961, and at the Brera Academy in Milan where she trained, in the 1980s.
Premio Lydia Award. Open call 2024
images: (cover 1) Fondazione Lydia Silvestri, archive and venue, ph Silvia Gottardi (2) Rachele Maistrello, «The Silent World», sound installation, Premio Lydia 2022, PAC Milan 2023, Ph Claudia Capelli, Courtesy PAC (3) Fondazione Lydia Silvestri, archive and venue, ph Silvia Gottardi
