Call For Artist – English

The Room of One’s Own project is based on the idea of entrusting the artist with the vision of Maison Bocum’s centre room. The intention is to make each visitor entering the space not just a mere user or viewer, but a part of the work itself, inhabiting and animating it.

The chosen artist will be tasked with “designing a space”, that is not just functional to displaying art, but an artistic creation in its own right, seamlessly integrated within Maison Bocum’s established timeline and logistical framework.
The project room with the selected artist’s layout will be displayed until the end of December 2024.

The aim is to enhance, promote, and support contemporary visual arts and artists. The open Call for the Project Room invites site-specific interventions.

The Call seeks to initiate a reflection on the role of everyday social space as a place “necessary for beauty”, as well as the need for bottom-up creative action with which independent artists and spaces cooperate in the social, cultural, and political regeneration of cities. 

To enable a better visualization of the space to be designed, a rendering with dimensional quotations and detailed images is available here.

Participation

The call is open to all artists under 40. Participation is free.
Each artist may submit a work related to the project’s theme by sending the required data, which is essential to access the selection (click here to view and download the access form).

Conceptual Design

The artist must provide:

– a 1,200 character project concept that includes a thorough description, dimensions, materials, techniques and supports, if digital, or drawings, sketches); 

– detailed cost estimate with precise and itemised costs.

Only unpublished and site-specific works are eligible for selection.

The deadline to apply by sending forms via WeTransfer to arte@virgaemilano.it is March 30 2024 no later than 23:59 (CET).

Scientific committee for the selection of projects

Franco Virga & Stefania Milano, Maison Bocum, Agata Polizzi (art historian and independent curator), Cristina Costanzo (contemporary art history researcher, Università degli studi di Palermo), Maurizio Carta (full professor of urban planning, Università degli studi di Palermo and councillor for urban regeneration of the City of Palermo; Isabella Ragonese (actress, director, playwright).

Selection 

The works chosen by the call’s Selection Committee in charge of evaluating will be notified to the applicants by e-mail on April 30 2024. 

The authors will be invited to carry out the project and, if off-premise, to arrange a hospitality for the week-long duration of the work production. 

At the same time, the artist will have to send by e-mail the completed and signed Copyright Release (that can be downloaded here) in order to attest the intellectual property of the work and allow the dissemination of the images for promotion of the initiative by Maison Bocum’s press and communication offices.