Time for women!

In an era where art is under increasing pressure – from censorship, economic scarcity, overload and overwork – the Max Mara Art Prize for Women remains, frankly, a vanguard of patronage for freedom of expression. This summer, from April 17 to August 31, Palazzo Strozzi in Florence hosts Time for Women! to celebrate 20 years of a prize which has nurtured two decades of talent. Works across disciplines from the nine artists who have received the award since its inception in 2005 will be collated into a singular exhibition that becomes a monument to artistic vision, and what can happen when artists are given space and time to work.

Right, photo by Sara Sassi at Okno Studio

Founded by the Max Mara Fashion Group in partnership with Whitechapel Gallery, this was the first award tailored specifically to supporting visual artists at inflection points of their career. Ambitious new projects are encouraged via a six-month residency in Italy which responds to both the professional and personal needs of the artist, organised by Collezione Maramotti, who joined the project as a partner in 2007. 

Built around an original Renaissance courtyard, now an epicentre for Italy’s cultural scene, Palazzo Strozzi houses everything from installations to wall pieces, and videos to sculptures. The artists  – Margaret Salmon, Hannah Rickards, Andrea Büttner, TANK alum Laure Prouvost, Corin Sworn, Emma Hart, Helen Cammock, Emma Talbot and Dominique White – were selected by an all-female panel of leading figures from the British art world, and have all grown from emerging talents to cornerstones of their respective fields. Presented together for the first time in one place, the works, produced over the artist's six-month stay in the Emilia Reggo region, carry visitors on a journey of the prize’s influence.

Left and next page, photos by Ela Bialkowska at OKNO Studio

Margaret Salmon, the first recipient of the award, produced three black and white films capturing fictional testimonies of Italian mothers at different stages of motherhood. Ninna Nanna is shown on vertically stacked television sets which crackle and illuminate the space. In another room, intricate shadows are cast across the walls by most recent prizewinner Dominique White’s metal-based sculptural exploration of “new worlds for blackness” (right). While some artists could be grouped in terms of investigations of political issues, family dynamics or traditional forms of theatre, Sara Piccini (director of Collezione Maramotti) noted that fundamentally each offered a “non-stereotypical vision of the feminine”. It’s expansiveness that’s on display; as Piccini says, the prize’s greatest strength “lies in the freedom that it fosters”. ◉