NAM – Not A Museum, Manifattura Tabacchi’s contemporary art programme, is happy to announce the winners of the international SUPERBLAST competition. SUPERBLAST winners will be invited to participate in an artist residency programme whose core values are to encourage artistic practice outside more ‘traditional’ locations by promoting the development of projects that are integrated with the ex-industrial spaces at Manifattura Tabacchi. 

Among the numerous applications received, six multidisciplinary artists were selected, whose projects have returned an original reflection and interpretation of the questions posed by the call: how do the past and future coexist in the present? What can we learn from the crisis, from the processes of collapse and recovery? What will be left of our infinitely stratified present for future generations? 

The projects were evaluated by an international panel made up of contemporary art curators: Andrea Lissoni, artistic director at Haus der Kunst in Munich,  Elena Magini, curator at Contemporary Art Centre Luigi Pecci in Prato, Caterina Molteni, assistant Curator at MAMbo in Bologna; Chiara Parisi, director at Centre Pompidou in Metz.

Irene Adorni (Parma, 1990) lives and works in Bologna, where she founded the artist-run space Parsec. After having undertaken humanities studies at the University of Bologna at the Literature Department, she attended the three years of painting at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Bologna with Prof. Mundula, where she obtained his diploma in 2016. She later moved to London, where she concluded in 2019 an MFA in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths University of London.
She recently exhibited on the occasion of the ABECEDARIO D’ARTISTA exhibition, curated by Gaer in collaboration with Toro at the Palazzo del Governatore, Parma (2021); HOLE, Temporary art peep show, curated by Adiacenze and Tatanka in collaboration with Andrea Tinterri, Adiacenze, Bologna (2021); HOLD ON, group show curated by Trans-curatorial, The Koppel Project, London (2020) and has been selected to present her work with Castro (Rome) on the occasion of ARTVERONA 2019, Offsite Project.
It has also recently been included in the publication of Exibart 222 EMERGING ARTISTS IN WHICH TO INVEST, edited by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi and Silvia Conta (2021). In her environmental installations, Adorni investigates the relationship between bodies in space, exploring the potential of their representation, starting from the paradoxical condition that sees incorporation play an ever-increasing role in the corporeal dimension of our lives.

Beatrice Favaretto (Venice, 1992) in 2015 graduated from the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Venice, in 2018 she obtained a specialist degree in New Technologies for Art – Cinema and Video Art at the Brera Accademia delle Belle Arti. In 2021 he was among the finalists of the first edition of the Biennale College Arte curated by Cecilia Alemani and Marta Papini.
In 2020 she won the Artists’ Film Italia Recovery Fund Award with The Pornographer promoted by the screen of art and was a finalist at the DucatoPrize2020. His recent exhibitions include: 2021, CLAMOR, with Giorgia Garzilli, Jacopo Belloni, Pietro Librizzi, Diego Gualandris, Sala Santa Rita, Rome; 2021, Art City Bologna, curated by Caterina Molteni and Lorenzo Balbi, Cassero LGTBI +, Bologna; 2021, PRIME TIME, curated by Adrienne Drake, Ilaria Gianni and Maria Alicata (MagicLantern Film Festival), smART Foundation, Rome; 2019, Indistinti Confini, Cinema Giorgione, Venice; 2018, Francesco Fabbri Prize for Contemporary Art, Villa Brandolini Pieve di Soligo; 2018, Diaspora, Church of San Carlo (RE), Reggio Emilia. Residency projects include: 2021-2022, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice; 2019, Castro Projects, Rome.

MERZBAU is an artistic collective made up of Andrea Parenti (1992, Milan), Nakouzi De Monte (1994, Trieste), Filippo Tocchi (1991, Bologna) and Pietro Cortona (1990, Lecco) which operates between Turin and Amsterdam and questions the processuality of creation as an agglomeration of tensions and plural forces.
The interest in the peripheral, anti-authorship and the deviant outlines the stylistic and operational code of the collective. His collaborative and nomadic practice is based on an aesthetic and affective research of the peripheral and the marginal and explores various types of expressive approaches, such as sculptural and installation interventions, architectural-urban planning operations, curatorial projects, sartorial assemblages, object, textual, sound works and performative. The narrative tension is always present and develops in a spatial, plastic and linguistic way through spontaneous architectures, transitory scenographies, assemblages, sculptures and costumes, stories, sound performances, networks of physical and psychic associations and paths of fictitious subjectivity that break through and pervade the space.
The expanded sculptures created incorporate non-traditional materials, discarded and rediscovered, and are presented in such a way as to evoke an arena where matter, word and action are disseminated in space and time, imposing an open, non-linear and psychotic use. The term sculpture emerges in this sense as a node, a crossroads, a place of transition composed of several phenomena, including objects and images, texts and actors.