PhD student 2022–2025
The doctoral project pursued by visual artist Elena Mazzi brings the territorial and cultural landscapes known as the Polar Silk Road to the forefront of contemporary art practices. How can posthuman visualities bring to light the deep environmental, social, political, and economic changes that are currently affecting the Arctic regions ? As the Arctic seas become increasingly navigable due to global warming and the consequent melting of the ice sheet, access to new resources is drastically enhanced, as promoters now get to lay their hands on no less than 20% of the world’s oil, gas, uranium, gold, platinum and zinc reserves. The aim of this research is to develop research-based speculative encounters between geopolitics and visual culture in relation to the Polar Silk Road commercial project, by considering how exploring through art the current political conflict might slow down or drastically transform this plan.
Arctic Regions are complex to define from a geological perspective and subject to rapid changes. Here, intricate relationships between natural resources and humans are interwoven. That is why art practices are fundamental in analyzing the entanglement between economy, geopolitics, ecology, and mobility, using an inclusive approach to different perspectives that go beyond dominant cultural groups and challenge colonial legacies.
Mazzi, through her own work, aims to investigate new tools to visualize the complex relationship between geopolitics and geography, taking into consideration that Arctic regions have devoted particular attention and care to environmental issues and sustainability in the last decades. With this project, she wishes to bridge the gap between the academic world and artistic communities, by opening transdisciplinary spaces for encounters.
· Fields : video, installation, sociology, environment, geopolitics
· Doctoral school: 86 – SHAL, Université Côte d’Azur
· Director: Christian Rinaudo
· Co-supervision: Joan Ayrton
Biography
Elena Mazzi (1984) is a visual artist, working with specific geographical and socio-political contexts. Her poetics deals with the relationship between human beings and the environment in which they live and with which they must reckon on a daily basis. This analysis, which often follows an anthropological approach, investigates and documents an identity which is at the same time personal and collective, and gives rise to forms of exchange and transformation.
She studied History of Art (Siena University), Visual Arts (IUAV, Venice) and Fine Arts (Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm).
Her works have been displayed in many solo and collective exhibitions all over the world, including: Luleå Biennal, Castello di Rivoli in Turin, der TANK in Basel, BIENALSUR in Buenos Aires, Whitechapel Gallery in London, BOZAR in Brussels, Sonje Art Center in Seoul, Palazzo Fortuny in Venice, the 16th Quadriennale in Rome, the 14th Istanbul Biennial.She attended several residency programs, including ZK/U (DE), Skaftfell Center for the Arts (IS), HIAP (FIN), Fundación Botín (E), Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (I). She is the winner of various prizes such as Cantica21, promoted by the Italian Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Culture, the 7th and the 12th edition of the Italian Council sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Culture, the XVII Ermanno Casoli Prize, the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation prize, the Illy prize. In 2015 she started to lead workshops for young artists, teachers and the general public in collaboration with Institutions, Schools, Academies.
