30.01 – 04.05.2025
Eighth edition · curated by Urs Stahel
FreeFree admission, no booking needed
The final stage of the biennial competition on industry and work for emerging artists: five finalists show an original, previously unseen project, developed over more than a year of research with the support of the jury and the Foundation’s curators.
Industry and technology, systems of labour and capital, inventions and the world of production: each project focuses on a specific geographical and human reality in an increasingly industrialised, globalised and digital world. Stories of migration, abandoned factories, trade and family meet our collective destiny.
Flyways
Photographic installations that weave together three stories: the artist’s family, who fled Iran; the often unheard accounts of women in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement; and the fate of migratory birds injured by the buildings humans keep putting up – birds that Soleimani herself cares for.
Autonomous Body
Car manufacturing and the extraction that makes it possible: the installations set lithium quarries beside coal mines and connect the past and future of the car in a global network running from the mine to the machine.
Imaginary Trip III
The factories of Lukula, in Kongo Central, founded in the colonial era and failing after independence. The artist stages herself with former workers among walls, old machinery and vegetation, in a melancholy visual song about the utopia of a possible rebirth.
Kɔdi
Wax-print fabric sold in Togo by the Nana Benz: businesswomen, the first to import Mercedes Benz cars, who secretly supported the independence movement by hiding messages in the fabrics they carried across town.
The Bees and the Ledger
A portrait of the artist’s grandmother, who emigrated from Poland to Australia in the 1970s and never managed to work in her trade there: “work despite unemployment” and “work after work”.
Founded in 2007 as GD4PhotoArt, the Grant is a biennial competition, now part of a wider project coordinated by Fondazione MAST: it gives five young international photographers the chance to engage with industry and technology, with systems of labour and capital, with inventions and the world of production.
For each edition an international jury of photography experts appoints the nominators, who invite young photographers to take part. The jurors choose five projects and award grants for research and production; when the projects are complete, Fondazione MAST stages an exhibition with a catalogue.
MAST CineKids: on Sundays at MAST.Auditorium, with the Cineteca di Bologna, animated films inspired by the themes of the exhibition, from migration to robots. Open to all, booking required.
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5 pmFree with booking, from 1 March to 4 May 2025: Wednesdays and Fridays at 5 pm, Saturdays at 11 am and 5 pm, Sundays at 11 am. With a gallery mediator and a screening of the video “Le voci dei finalisti” (The finalists’ voices: stories of industry, work and migration), in which the artists talk about their work. Up to 20 people, about 70 minutes.
Every Sunday until 4 May: a tour of the exhibition and the workshop “Mini Grant: we are the artists” at MAST.Academy, in which children become artists, curators, jurors and installers of a small show; then a snack at MAST.Caffetteria and, at 5.15 pm, a MAST CineKids film. Designed by mediators and educators from the MAST Nursery School. 30 children aged 6 to 11 in two groups, up to 2 children per family.
From 11 March to 2 May 2025, Tuesday to Friday, 10 am – 12.30 pm: a tour and a workshop (2½ hours) along three routes.
Travelling with images
Migration and travel, with the works of Wasikowski and Soleimani.
Machines like us?
Humans, technology and the environment, with Hammond’s work.
Messengers of time
Industry, work and cultural heritage, with the works of Rosi and Lubondo.
On Sundays at MAST.Auditorium, with the Cineteca di Bologna: ten animated films inspired by the themes of the exhibition, open to all, booking required (listed under related events).
The five projects, each introduced by an essay from its nominator. Edited by Urs Stahel, with texts by Clément Chéroux, Charlotte Jansen, Kim Knoppers, Bindi Vora, Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa and Urs Stahel.
