The Italian Cultural Institute is organizing an artist residency for Ra di Martino (Rome, 1975) from May 2 to May 31, 2025. Di Martino is a visual artist who has always worked across various media—video, film, photography—and is now experimentally engaging with new technologies. The residency aims to result in a photographic exhibition developed in dialogue with the place, its history, its materials, and its tensions.
With this project, the Italian Cultural Institute of Beirut seeks particularly to promote the circulation of ideas, the arts, and the sciences. Photography and new technologies are today seen as the most effective tools to convey a message of coexistence and to bring new generations closer to artistic creation.
With her photographic project Electric Whispers, Ra di Martino explores the important role of gathering spaces for young people and adolescents living in Lebanon during a dramatic period, marked by intensifying conflicts that appear to have taken control.
The residency is conceived as a hub of connection and dialogue with the local reality, and will include public events (artist talks, lectures, open studios, etc.) as well as workshops or activities involving local communities, schools, and young artists. These may take the form of dialogic interventions designed to share her methodology, and will also serve to foster relationships with the international context or with other artists.
Ra di Martino (Rome, 1975 – www.radimartino.com) studied at Chelsea College of Art and the Slade School of Art in London, and later lived in New York from 2005 to 2010. She currently lives and works in Rome. She has exhibited at institutions such as Tate Modern in London, MoMA PS1 in New York, Palazzo Grassi in Venice, GAM and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Macro and MAXXI in Rome, Museion in Bolzano, MCA in Chicago, HangarBicocca and PAC in Milan.
She has participated in biennials such as Busan Biennale and Manifesta, and in international film festivals including Locarno Film Festival, Transmediale Berlin, Kasseler Dokfest, Torino Film Festival, and Venice Film Festival, where in 2014 she won the SIAE Award, the Gillo Pontecorvo Award, and a special mention at the Nastri d’Argento for her film The Show MAS Go On (2014). Her first feature film Controfigura (2017) premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
In 2018/2019 she developed the project Afterall, supported by the Mibac – Italian Council award and presented at Mattatoio – Palaexpo in Rome (2019) and at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2020). In 2019 she produced the video L’eccezione, commissioned by the Museo Novecento in Florence, which won the first edition of the Lio Capital Prize (Milan, 2020). In 2021 she created the experimental documentary on the Pontedera Theatre Fuori dai teatri.
In 2022 she opened the solo exhibition PLAY at Forte Belvedere in Florence, and La dove muore, canta dedicated to the archive of Carmelo Bene (Museo Castromediano, Lecce and Torre Matta, Otranto). In 2022–2023 she won the PAC – Contemporary Art Plan, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, with the project Kant Can’t, a 3D animated video installation and sculpture series, opening in 2024 at the Pinacoteca, Polo Museale of Potenza. In 2024, she also won the AFabrica Prize at the Fid Marseille festival.
For more info: https://radimartino.com