The European Cultural Centre Italy has announced the list of ECC Awards finalists presented within the exhibition Personal Structures – Confluences. This exhibition is the eighth international contemporary showcase and runs concurrently with the Venice Art Biennale.
Exhibition Location and Dates
The exhibition will be available in Venice from May 9 to November 22, 2026, at locations such as Palazzo Bembo, Palazzo Mora, and Jardins da Marinaressa. It serves as the backdrop for the awards ceremony, which recognizes artistic practices engaging with the exhibition theme 'Confluences' through research, interdisciplinarity, and connection to place.
ECC Awards Categories
Winners will be announced on November 22, 2026, during the closing event. The ECC Awards is divided into five categories, each highlighting artistic practices that transform diversity into forms of connection, exchange, and shared knowledge, placing research, interdisciplinarity, and a deep sense of place at the center within the Venetian context. These categories include: Artistic Interpretation of the Theme: Confluences; Research and Curation Project, recognizing practices based on archives and investigation; Transdisciplinary Project, uniting art, science, and design; New Practices, representing new voices in contemporary art; and Space and Context Project, focusing on spatial interventions and site-specific works.
International Participation and Jury
The selected projects represent 17 countries, including Japan, the United States, the Netherlands, China, South Korea, France, Pakistan, Nepal, Israel, Bahrain, Canada, and the United Kingdom. An international jury, composed of specialists in contemporary art, curation, editing, and cultural institutions, will evaluate the finalists. The jury includes: Nargess Banks from the UK, a writer and editor specializing in art, design, and visual culture; Jesús Alberto Flores from Mexico, a cultural strategist supporting emerging artists; Rahul Gudipudi from India, founder of the artistic initiative ke—na—; Euijung McGillis from Canada, assistant curator at the National Gallery of Canada; and Anouska Phizacklea from Australia, director of the Australian Photography Museum and former co-chair of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival.
Project Examples: Theme Interpretation
The project Relational Logic – Beyond Dualism, a World Reconnected by the Japanese curatorial platform B-OWND explores the relationship between art, craft, and modern technologies, overcoming the traditional division between art and craft. Founded in 2019, B-OWND promotes hybrid and interdisciplinary collaborations using digital tools and blockchain technology.
In the project nomos (cube Venezia), Marta Russo, an artist from the United States, presents a large porcelain installation. Her ceramic-based sculptural practice examines the connection between matter, perception, and nature, creating complex visual ecosystems.
The installation Intimate Unthinkables by Adrian Parra Zarzeco and Liu Shimin combines everyday female experience across different geographical and cultural contexts. The work merges Liu Shimin's sculpture, rooted in Chinese tradition, with A.Z.'s contemporary practice addressing gender violence and social transformation.
BALC Gallery in Japan showcases G-sim Seyeon, an artist from South Korea, whose practice lies at the intersection of painting and performative gestures. He explores the 'moment' as a fluid unit where past, present, and future merge into a single sensory flow.
Project Examples: Transdisciplinary Approach
Stephens Tapestry Studio from Johannesburg presents two Porter series tapestries in collaboration with William Kentridge: Carte de France Divisée en 86 départements and Asia Minor. These works explore themes of migration and transition as ways of preserving memory and identity, utilizing traditional weaving techniques between South Africa and Eswatini.
A+N Studio creates light objects and installations based on well-being research. The Breathing Light project transforms the rhythm of deep breathing into a spatial light experience designed to reduce stress and promote mindfulness.
In the project Becoming You, American artist and educator Geraldine Ondrizek collaborates with Japanese physician and bioethics researcher Shizuko Takahashi to visualize human development from cell to birth through painting and narrative, translating biological processes onto Japanese parchments.
French artist Orlan presents WE ARE INCONSOLABLE, a project that uses AI-generated imagery and painterly interventions to transform pain and anger into a critical and political form. This reinterpretation of suffering iconography functions as an act of resistance against systemic violence.
Project Examples: Research and Curation
Mahwish Chishti presents Tanka Tales: Thread as Archive, a textile installation that uses embroidery as a living archive of women's memory, labor, and cultural heritage. Pakistani artisans participate in weaving text and thread into a non-linear narrative.
ADEMA University School, a prestigious higher education institution in Palma de Mallorca, displays works by its fine arts students that reflect a critical consideration of social, political, and environmental issues.
Princeton Research Film Studio, led by Erica A. Kiss, investigates cinema in the age of automation and artificial intelligence, proposing a return to the immersive and artisanal dimension of moving images, combining philosophy, science, and visual storytelling.
The project Ester Hernández: An Ecological Memoir by Jennifer Garcia Picock is dedicated to the ecological and political practice of artist Esther Hernández. Through archival materials and hybrid research methods, the project explores the intersections of art, ecological activism, and Chicano cultural memory.
New Practices in Art
Desmond Beach, an artist and educator from New York, works with textile art, performance, and installations, exploring the legacy of racial violence and memory practices in the African diaspora using ritualistic approaches.
Amelia Galgon, an artist from Philadelphia based in New York, explores the relationship between queer body and domestic space. Her works, combining figurative painting and engraving, depict figures in constant transformation within interiors.
Oona Frost, an artist from the Netherlands, uses installations, inflatable sculptures, and interactive media to study themes of individuality, authorship, and speculative futures.
