The residency of the winning artists of the second edition of the Torino Social Impact Art Award has come to an end.

Monia Ben Hamouda and the MRZB collective, who during the month of July were supported by tutors Matteo Mottin and Ramona Ponzini from the Treti Galaxie art project, worked on the production of two video works, offering their unique point of view to the representation of social issues and “distant” life stories.

During their stay at Combo, the artists also had the opportunity to confront themselves with the curators and the network of Torino Social Impact, being introduced to the heart of the world of social innovation in Turin. One example was to participate in the co-design activities promoted by the Italian Network of Popular Culture within the project Spaccio di Cultura – Community Concierge.

During one of these meetings, we asked them to tell us about the social value of their work. Here is what emerged.

Monia

Monia Ben Hamouda (Milan, 1991) worked on the film project “Adhan to Dora”, with the aim of portraying the complexities and contradictions of cultural assimilation.

In her case, it was interesting to interact with the city of Turin and the Porta Palazzo district, which reminds her of Tunisia, her country of origin.

The fact that Tunisia does not have a pavilion at the Venice Biennale is symptomatic of how Arab culture is still very underrepresented in contemporary art circuits.
With her project, Monia wants to give voice and visibility to artists who have different cultural backgrounds and, for this reason, find it more difficult to fit in.

Collettivo mrzb

The MRZB Collective worked on the project “STILI DRAMA XVIII-XXI”, oriented towards the deconstruction of a film and the compression of the idea of the contemporary city.

In art, there are implicit meanings that have to do with social impact, from the recovery of waste materials for the production of works to collaborations with groups of emerging artists and marginal communities.
The free and spontaneous approach of this Collective is based on aesthetic and affective research that generates a representation of the suburbs that is frankly authentic.

The works produced during the residency will be presented at Artissima 2021 (November 5-7).