Niccolò Masini is an artist and researcher whose work stands at the intersection of narrative and craft, but also poetry and anthropology. Scrutinizing the inheritances carried within the politics of time, space, and memory, his work seeks to provide a vehicle for observing tangible and intangible processes, mappings, and traces in relationship to postcolonial and post-materialistic discourses. Entwining interdisciplinary practices, territorial based approaches and teaching, his research engages with the possibilities between spatial modalities and social-cultural frameworks, examining the impact of territorial understanding on individual, intra, and collective identities.
Ranging across medias, territories, and perspectives, recent projects revolved around questions of displacement, diaspora and de-territorialization processes, questioning the role of globalization, the nation-state, and capitalism in setting the standard information provided within our capacity to relate with the complexities of the realities surrounding us. From these associations, he tries to dissect narratives, myths, and their archive, reconstructing them visually, epistemologically, and poetically while engaging with imagination’s role in critically enhancing counter-historical sets of conditions across contemporary practices.
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His works and research have been exhibited in several international venues, including, The Museum of Contemporary Art of the Republic of Srpska / MSURS (2024), The Museum of Contemporary Art / Moca Skopje (2021/2023); The Watermill Center, New York (2022); The Bali Purnati Center for the Arts, Bali (2022); Amaneï, Aeolian Islands (2021/2022); Palazzo Ducale, Genoa (2018/2020), MUST / Museo Storico Città di Lecce, Lecce (2021), The Meštrović Pavilion, Zagreb (2019); Momo gallery, Cape Town (2019) and the National Museum of Life and Ethnography of Macedonia and Thrace, Thessaloniki (2019). Among others, residency programs included The Montresso Foundation / Jardin Rouge, Marrakesh (2025), The Boghossian Foundation / Villa Empain, Bruxelles (2024), The Losari Foundation, The Taut Seni Foundation and The Yayasan Bali Purnati Center for the Arts, Java and Bali (2023), The Watermill Center, New York (2022), Amaneï, Aeolian Islands (2021/2022), La Ira De Dios, Buenos Aires (2021) and Residenze per l’arte / Premio Italia Argentina, Buenos Aires (2019). He received the Italian Council XIII Edition – Research grant Award (2024), the Miller-Zillmer Foundation Vision into the Future fellowship Award (2019/2021), the Project Anywhere program (2019 and 2022), the VAA – Video Art Award (2019), and, in 2018, he was awarded Best Young Artist Of The Year (Painting & Sculpture) by the GAMMA competition and GM conference of Tokyo.
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Working on the metaphor of the “island”, since 2018 part of his research has focused on the ongoing long-term project, Islands of Time, a trajectory exploring the relationships between the formulation of intangible feelings of belonging and the construction of geographical identity. Under the support of the Miller-Zillmer Foundation and the Project Anywhere program, this ongoing research includes on-site field research phases into different locations, which are all situated in geographical borders, borders of migration and/or political displacements. The project attempts to transcend linear conceptions of time and instead approach issues such as memory and movement by considering past, present, and future as deeply entangled within a global geopolitical context.
Alongside his practice and research, he co-founded Progetto Amalgama, a trans-disciplinary scientific/artistic educational roaming program for adolescents aged between fifteen and seventeen focused within the Italian territory and beyond. Intertwining science and multidisciplinary methodologies, this program “amalgamates” theoretical scientific study and experiential approaches, emphasizing observation, “learning by doing,” and interdisciplinary skills in emerging and future generations.
To date, he lives and works between Genoa, Rome and the Aeolian Islands.
Curriculum / Resume > Niccolò Masini_CV_2024