Deloitte's Photo Grant 2024 at MUDEC

With the theme Possibilities, the appointment with international contemporary photography returns to Milan at MUDEC: from 9 November 2024 the final exhibition of the 2nd edition of Deloitte’s Photo Grant opens to the public.

Overview

This year - in its two sections - it hosts the photographic projects Critical Minerals - Geography Of Energy by Davide Monteleone, the Italian photographer who won the 2024 edition, "Nominations" category, and Dust From Home by Fernanda Liberti, the Brazilian photographer who won the 2023 edition, "Open Call" category. A preview of the Reinas project by Fabiola Ferrero, the Venezuelan photographer and winner of the 2024 edition, Open Call category, will also be presented. Promoted by Deloitte Italia with the patronage of Fondazione Deloitte and in collaboration with 24 ORE Cultura, under the artistic direction of Denis Curti and the BlackCamera team, the exhibition will be hosted at Mudec Photo and will remain open to the public until 15 December 2024, with free admission.

After Connections, the subject of Deloitte's first Photo Grant in 2023, 2024 was the year dedicated to Possibilities. The 20 outstanding photographers in the Nominations category and the 857 participants in the Open Call category were asked to look to the future - through their eyes - with the aim of capturing the possibilities for change and transformation offered by the present time, both personal and historical.

The word Possibilities invited the artists to reflect on the power of choices that each of us can take, individually and as part of society and humanity as a whole; an infinity of possibilities, some of which have the potential to change the course of our existence, defining our destiny.

Critical Minerals - Geography Of Energy by Davide Monteleone

Humanity itself is a stage of infinite possibilities, which can be understood through Davide Monteleone's (1974) interpretation of this theme in his photographic project Critical Minerals - Geography Of Energy, winner of the Nominations category of the Photo Grant edition 2024. Through the centuries, we have witnessed an endless expansion of our knowledge, skills and aspirations. However, with this growth has also come the weight of global responsibilities and challenges.

Presented by gallery owner and curator Pierre André Podbielski, the exhibition is a visual journey that explores the transformations of the global energy landscape towards renewable sources. A thoughtful exploration of the possibilities these changes represent, it invites the visitor to reflect on the intertwined geopolitical, social and environmental narratives emerging from the growing demand for essential minerals for renewable energy.

Accompanied by a volume published by 24 ORE Cultura, the exhibition is a summa of these themes very dear to Monteleone, which thanks to the Deloitte Photo Grant is presented in its entirety and completeness, presenting a mixture of medium and large format images, flanked by aerial shots and photographs taken using the stitching technique: a digital fusion of 8-10 individual shots to provide a panoramic and immersive perspective. The show is further enhanced by a video component designed to intensify the immersive experience, with sounds, voices and evocative landscapes transporting the visitor into a unique sensory dimension. The data visualisation section, edited by Valentina D'Efilippo, plays a key role in providing a clear and in-depth picture of the project, offering details and information crucial to understanding the scope of the work.

This project represents an evolution in Davide Monteleone's narrative method, which in recent years has adopted a complex and layered narrative construction approach, supported by a multidisciplinary team. Among the main collaborators, Samantha Azzani, studio manager and producer, and Manuel Montesano, video editor and camera operator, have contributed to a shared and detailed vision of the project.

Critical Minerals - Geography Of Energy is a perfect example of a collective project: not only the result of synergetic work with the Studio Monteleone team, but also the result of collaboration with local storytellers who enriched the narrative with their unique and authentic perspective. The fundamental contributions of the authors Cristóbal Olivares (Chile), Guerchom Ndebo (Congo) and Muhammad Fadli (Indonesia) made the fieldwork particularly rich and varied, visually and narratively integrating the complexity of the project through their shots and footage.

Dust From Home by Fernanda Liberti

The photographic project Dust From Home by Brazilian photographer Fernanda Liberti (Rio de Janeiro, 1994) won the Open Call of the 2023 competition, category dedicated to artists under 35 from all over the world.

The grant allowed Liberti to develop his work throughout the year and bring his project idea to fruition. Fernanda Liberti focuses on the diversity of migrations, drawing on the story of her family of Syrian, Italian and Albanian origin, who crossed the ocean to settle in Brazil, seeking a new beginning. The artist began her journey using her family's photographic archive, with the aim of creating a visual link between landscape, time, nostalgia, heritage and politics.

The exhibition is divided into three sections placed in dialogue with each other - Family Archives / Return to Brazil / Syria - representing the stages of Fernanda's journey in search of her identity as a woman within the family dimension. The archive part collects all those images that parents, grandparents and other relatives have jealously guarded through the years, since the first moments of their arrival in Brazil. As the second section on Brazil, representing the present, shows, thanks to the Deloitte Photo Grant Fernanda was able to bring almost all her loved ones back together: her family gathered for a big lunch together, using food as an affective medium to communicate love. Finally, Syria recounts the long and exciting journey that allowed her to discover an as yet unknown part of herself, namely her Arab origins. Protagonists, in her shots, are the typical customs, such as food, art, culture, but above all the possibility of indulging in the discovery of what one does not know. By scouring the various towns in search of traces of her ancestors, Fernanda was able to reconnect with a part of her Syrian family she had never known, thus gaining an extra piece of family.

Preview of Reinas by Fabiola Ferrero

The spaces of Mudec will also present a preview of the Reinas project by Fabiola Ferrero (1991), the Venezuelan photographer and winner of the 2024 edition, "Open Call" category.

The work presented by Fabiola Ferrero focused on two aspects of Venezuela's identity: oil production and the beauty of women. Even today, the country holds the largest proven oil reserve in the world and the largest number of international beauty titles. In the 1950s, thanks to close ties with the United States and Europe for foreign investment and immigration, Venezuela entered an era of great progress. The Miss Venezuela contest, introduced in 1952 by the American company PanAm Airlines, was part of this flourishing period and expressed the ideals of progress through the female figure. Focusing on the women who have been Miss Venezuela and analysing the concepts of beauty closely linked to the ideal of modernity that emerged with the oil boom, Reinas focuses on the female perspective in the history and identity of Venezuela.