Tanja Pak’s exhibition wins the sixth edition ofthe Fondazione di Venezia Award

The Premio Fondazione di Venezia per The Venice Glass Week, now in its sixth edition, was awarded to the exhbition Shape of Silence. Tanja Pak, curated by Francesca Giubilei at SPARC* – Spazio Arte Contemporanea. The Jury awarded the project “for its poetic and technically accomplished exploration of the limits of glass, from the physical boundaries of the material to the outer reaches of its expressive potential. Through an evocative dialogue between material, landscape and processes of transformation, the exhibition gives expression to humanity’s timeless yearning to reconnect with nature, a desire that resonates more powerfully today than ever, evoking the ice of the polar regions through the heat of the furnace. A project of extraordinary beauty, underpinned by profound and rigorous research, that reveals compelling new possibilities for contemporary glass.”

The Jury – composed of Jean Blanchaert, Giovanna Palandri and Paola Marini – also decided to award three Special Mentions to Simone Crestani for the exhibition Time Consumed at Palazzo Contarini Polignac – Magazzino Gallery, a project that “gave form to the inexorable passage of time, transforming a table set for two and its lush flower garden into a powerful metaphor for the transience of life”; to two projects organised and promoted with the Committee for the Safeguarding of the Art of Venetian Glass Beads, Perle di Luce by Mattia Gaido and Re-Blooming nella Laguna by Holly Parr and Marisa Convento, “for their significant contribution to safeguarding and transmitting the Art of Venetian Glass Beads, expressing through artistic creation, documentation and participation the passion and dedication of Venice’s community of beadmakers”; and to the project Glass Bridge. From Murano to the World: Glass as an Act of Cooperation, organised by Emmanuel Babled, Kukua and Shanga, together with the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and the City of Venice at the Scuola del Vetro Abate Zanetti, “a journey of exchange and sharing that brought Shanga’s artisans to Murano to work at the Scuola del Vetro Abate Zanetti. There, they created a dialogue between different cultures, skills and traditions, turning glass into an extraordinary instrument of inclusion, solidarity and collaboration”.