EXHIBITION
MAST PHOTOGRAPHY GRANT
ON INDUSTRY AND WORK 2025
8th Edition
Curated by Urs Stahel
30.01.2025 - 04.05.2025
MAST.Gallery
TUESDAY–SUNDAY, 10 AM –7 PM
FREE ENTRANCE WITHOUT RESERVATION
The new exhibition set up in the Galleries of Fondazione MAST is the culmination of the biennial photography competition on industry and work dedicated to emerging artists, who develop an original and unpublished project on the themes of the prize: the world of industry and technology, the systems of work and capital, inventions, developments and the universe of production.
The five finalists of the MAST Photography Grant 2025 interpret the topics of industry and work by focusing on specific geographical and human contexts in an increasingly industrialized, globalized, digitized world.
THE FINALISTS
Selected from forty-two candidates under-35 years of age from around the world:
SHEIDA SOLEIMANI (USA) (winner)
Flyways
In her photographic installations Sheida Soleimani develops complex constellations out of the traumatic history of her own family (who fled Iran), the often unheard, suppressed experiences of women in the Women, Life, Freedom movement in Iran, and the migratory birds that are injured by the buildings and structures that we humans have erected and continue to build.
FELICITY HAMMOND (UK)
Autonomous Body
Felicity Hammond's project leads us directly into industrial production and its consequences. Her project aims to make new connections between the history and future of car manufacturing and the extractive processes that enable it. It explores how both the tangible and intangible processes of car production are globally networked, from mine to machine.
GOSETTE LUBONDO (RDC)
Imaginary Trip III
Gosette Lubondo visits some industries in Lukula, a city in the Kongo Central province, created during the colonial era and which gradually closed in the years after independence. She portrays herself together with former employees in the industrial grounds, on which the walls, old machines, nature, and the utopia of a possible resurgence of this time, of these industries, converge to a melancholic visual canto.
SILVIA ROSI (ITA)
Kɔdi
Rosi’s work focuses on a topic that is as huge as it is almost unknown: the wax printed fabric that can be found in Togo and in many other African countries and purveyed by women known colloquially as “Nana Benz”. In Togo, Nana means “mother” or “grandmother,” while the second part of the name references the famous automobile brand, Mercedes-Benz. The Nana Benz were business women and the first to import this vehicle. At the same time, they secretly supported the independence movement by hiding messages within the fabric they sold and transported across the city.
KAI WASIKOWSKI (AU)
The Bees and the Ledger
The project explores themes of industry, migration and labor through a portrait of the artist's grandmother who emigrated in the 1970s from Poland to Australia but was never able to establish herself professionally in her new homeland. Kai visualizes on the one hand the history of this “running aground” on the new continent and, on the other hand, the issue of “employment despite unemployment,” of “work after work,” of employment as thinking, as being, as an engine for life, physically and mentally.
THE GRANT
A biennial competition created in 2007, and initially named GD4PhotoArt, it became part of a larger project coordinated by the MAST Foundation with the aim of offering five young international photographers the opportunity to confront issues related to the world of industry and work.
The competition jury, composed of international photography experts, nominates selectors for each edition who identify talented young photographers and invite them to participate in the Grant. The jurors choose five projects from those submitted, awarding grants for the study, artistic research and implementation phases. Upon completion of the projects, the MAST Foundation mounts an exhibition, accompanied by a catalogue.
The Grant has contributed to the creation of a photographic selection of contemporary artists who are part of the MAST Foundation's historic and comprehensive collection of industrial photography, curated by Urs Stahel.
FIND OUT ABOUT MAST PHOTOGRAPHY GRANT
