At the beginning of their ten-month stay in Florence, the Villa Romana Fellows 2018 will introduce themselves in a joint exhibition of new works.

The artists Jeewi Lee, Christophe Ndabananiye, Lerato Shadi and Viron Erol Vert have been nominated for the fellowship by the jurors Nasan Tur, artist, and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, director of SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, and Curator at Large at documenta 14.

Jeewi Lee, born 1987 in Seoul, lives in Berlin. She has studied painting at the Universität der Künste in Berlin and at Hunter College of New York. Her site-specific installations, actions and series of images focus on the themes of daily events or performances, which are perceived only as traces in the final work. These traces are evidence of movements (in the urban or in the exhibition space) and do simultaneously reflect the process of their production. Jeewi Lee has participated in numerous collective shows. She is part of the 2014 and 2017 Festival of Future Nows at the Neue Nationalgalerie of Berlin.

Christophe Ndabananiye, born 1977 in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, since 2009 lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the Hochschule der Bildende Künste of Saarbrücken. As a painter, he’s the author of a series of self-portraits informed by themes of traumatic experiences related to escape, family, homeland and mother tongue. Then he began using shoes as an embodiment of the movement of the individual and of the force of gravity. In his own country, Congo, the artist photographs the shoes of unknown people and then depicts them in paintings or installations. In his latest paintings he is developing his work on memory on paper and polystyrene sheets.

Lerato Shadi, born 1979 in Mafikeg, South Africa, lives and works in Berlin. She studied art at the University of Johannesburg. Her practice investigates the politics of the body, of the female body, the body of the black South African woman. In her work Lerato deals with themes of institutional violence, of the patriarchal and colonial strategies of exclusion and oblivion and of the resistance through subjective narratives. Shadi works with different media including drawing, performance and video. Her works have been presented in many museums and project spaces, including the Biennials of Moscow and Dakar.

Viron Erol Vert, born 1975 in Germany, lives and works in Istanbul and Berlin. He studied at the Universität der Künste in Berlin, at the Royal Academy of Antwerp, and has further education in fashion and textile design. With his objects and installations, Vert confronts himself with the narratives of Mediterranean historiography and translates their characters into his own visual codes. Recently, he installed inside the Galerie Wedding in Berlin a Dreamatory, a sort of dormitory in which he invites visitors to make space for their dreams in their daily lives. Among his solo shows venues are the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, the gallery Galerist in Istanbul and the Berghain in Berlin.

Each year, the Villa Romana Prize is awarded to four artists of outstanding artistic quality living in Germany. The Villa Romana Fellowship includes a ten-month residency at the Villa Romana in Florence, free use of an atelier and a monthly stipend.
At the end of their stay they jointly produce a publication.

Opening hours: Tuesday to Friday 2 to 6 pm and on appointment

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