Milan, 25 January 2024 – Fondazione Prada announces its main activities for 2024 within its three permanent venues in Milan and Venice, and the outposts in Shanghai and Tokyo.
By establishing an open dialogue with artists, curators, scientists, scholars, filmmakers and intellectuals, Fondazione Prada addresses an international and plural audience. Its effort focuses on finding original and engaging ways to examine the complexity of human culture, beyond the boundaries of specific disciplines. In 2024, Fondazione Prada will present exhibition projects of Meriem Bennani, Michaël Borremans, Christoph Büchel, Miranda July and Pino Pascali, a new initiative of the neuroscientific project “Human Brains”, as well as the screening program of Cinema Godard and activities within the field of education.
As stated by Miuccia Prada, President and Director of Fondazione, “Also in the months to come, our institution will try to explore issues of the present from multiple perspectives, involving artists of different generations and backgrounds to identify tools that challenge current opinions and help us think more profoundly.”
Osservatorio, located at Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, will host “Miranda July: New Society,” the first museum exhibition dedicated to Miranda July (United States, 1974), from 7 March to 14 October 2024. Curated by Mia Locks, the exhibition presents a new video series, F.A.M.I.L.Y. (Falling Apart Meanwhile I Love You), and spans three decades of select, related work by the American artist, filmmaker and writer, including performance, web-based works and installation. “New Society” investigates Miranda July’s ongoing exploration of risk and intimacy through performance, participatory projects and technology. With vulnerability and humor, July questions established cultural norms and hierarchies through her uniquely porous relationship with the viewer.
The exhibition will be complemented by the first complete retrospective in Italy of the artist’s filmography, which will be screened at Cinema Godard. The program will include three feature films, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), The Future (2011) and Kajillionaire (2020), together with a selection of short films and unreleased works on big screen. From April to July 2024, the practice of Miranda July will also be the focus of an exhibition at Prada Aoyama in Tokyo.
Prada Rong Zhai will present “The Promise”, a solo exhibition dedicated to Michaël Borremans (Belgium, 1963) from 22 March to 14 May 2024. The 1918 historical residence in Shanghai, which represents an architectural and decorative dialogue between Chinese and Western traditions, will feature a selection of Borremans’ pictorial works. The artist observes the human condition by creating absurd juxtapositions and an ambiguous tension between his refined technique and the portrayed subjects. The sense of anachronism conveyed by his art will be enhanced by the intimate and domestic-like exhibition spaces at Prada Rong Zhai.
An extensive retrospective dedicated to Pino Pascali (Italy, 1935 – 1968) will be presented at Fondazione Prada in Milan from 28 March to 23 September 2024. The exhibition, curated by Mark Godfrey, will include over fifty works by the artist from Italian and international museums and distinguished private collections. The exhibition is divided into four sections. The first looks at the way Pascali approached his solo exhibitions between 1965 and 1968, creating imaginative environments rather than just selections of works from his studio. The second part shows how he made strategic contributions to important group shows in these years. This section will also include works by other artists who exhibited alongside him. The third section examines the way he performed with his sculptures in photographs taken by Claudio Abate, Andrea Taverna, and Ugo Mulas, and how these photographs suggested imaginative ways of approaching his works. The fourth section looks at Pascali’s natural and industrial materials understanding where he got them from, what they were used for in commerce, which other artists were also using them, and what has happened to them over time. Together these four angles on Pascali’s work help demonstrate why, despite the brevity of his career, he remains so important to contemporary artists.
During the Art Biennale, the Venice venue, located in the historical palazzo Ca’ Corner della Regina, will present the project “Monte di Pietà” conceived by artist Christoph Büchel (Switzerland, 1966) from 20 April to 24 November 2024. Originally the home of Venetian merchants Corner di San Cassiano, Ca’ Corner della Regina was built between 1724 and 1728 on the ruins of the Gothic palazzo in which Caterina Corner, the future queen of Cyprus, was born in 1454. In 1800, the palazzo became property of Pope Pius VII, who assigned it to the Congregation of the Padri Cavanis. From 1834 to 1969, it hosted the Monte di Pietà (pawnshop) of Venice, whereas between 1975 and 2010 it became the Historical Archive of the Venice Biennale and has been an art institution since 2011. This layered history is Büchel’s starting point for the construction of an articulated network of spatial, economic, and cultural relationships. The study of debt as the concept at the base of society and an instrument of power takes shape as a complex installation. The project will include historical and contemporary works, new installations and a vast selection of objects and documents related to the history of property, credit and finance, the development of collections and archives, and the creation and meaning of real or artificial wealth. Among the works of different artists and objects on display, the exhibition will also feature Christoph Büchel’s The Diamond Maker (2020-), a suitcase containing lab grown diamonds, the end- result of the process of the transformation of the artist’s entire body of artworks in his possession, including the ones from his youth and childhood, and those yet to be created.
As part of the scientific project “Human Brains”, on 17 and 18 October, Fondazione Prada will organize the second edition of an international conference accompanied by an exhibition focused on the important role of prevention and early intervention in neurodegenerative diseases. The project will host fifteen leading international research institutes, patient associations, and organizations in the field of brain health, as well as policymakers. Its main aims are to achieve productive discussion and dialogue among the various players to promote specific measures in the area of modifiable factors of neurodegenerative diseases,
first and foremost the environment, leading to a real “call to action” capable of reaching a wide community.
The results of the first four phases of “Human Brains” – the online conference “Culture and Consciousness” (2020), the streamed panel discussions “Conversations” (2021 – 2022), the exhibition “It Begins With an Idea” (2022) in Venice, and the forum and exhibition “Preserving the Brain” (2022) in Milan, are collected in an extensive publication published by Fondazione Prada and available starting February 2024.
From 31 October 2024 to 24 February 2025, a new commission by artist Meriem Bennani (Morocco, 1988) will be presented at Fondazione Prada in Milan. The project will consist of a large-scale installation and an unreleased animated film, which explores the range of sociopolitical and cultural shifts on our emotional lives, from the collective to the personal.
On one side, the large mechanical installation animates hundreds of secondhand items into a chaotic ballet, on the other, the feature film directed with Orian Barki and creative produced by John Michael Boling and Jason Coombs, is set in a world populated by anthropomorphic animals and suspended between realism, autobiography, and fiction.
Cinema Godard is a place where creative visions and unexpected perspectives of the cinematic landscape, both past and present, are explored intertwining visual arts and music. The activities of Cinema Godard will grow through 2024 and the programming, curated by Paolo Moretti, will further expand its reach among different genres and realms, through a rich calendar of screenings in addition to talks open to the public with Italian and international directors, actors, and critics.
As part of the education program, Accademia dei bambini will resume its free activities for children with thematic workshops during the weekends. Running from 3 February to 7 April, the new workshop series “Sogni” (“Dreams”) is conceived by artist and photographer Ilaria Turba. Until June 2024, Accademia extends the reach of its activities also to elementary and preschools. Every Wednesday, school classes from Milan can participate free of charge in workshops conceived each time by different “masters”: architects, pedagogues, artists, scientists, filmmakers, and musicians.
In June, the winner of the seventh edition of the Premio di Laurea (Degree Award) will be announced. Established by Fondazione Prada in 2018, this annual initiative rewards the passion and commitment of students who have presented a graduation thesis about cultural themes within Milan-based universities Università degli Studi di Milano, Politecnico di Milano, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Università Bocconi, Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione IULM and Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele.