Third edition: Habitat

ALA presents the third edition of ALA Art Prize, an award dedicated to contemporary art.

The ALA Art Prize 2023, an initiative by ALA For Art promoted by the ALA Group, kicks off for the third year running with an open call to all artists and collectives of artists aged between 18 and 40 operating in Italy. The call will be open from February 14 to April 15, 2023; participation is free, application via an online form on the website.

For its 2023 edition, the ALA Art Prize invites artists to engage with the idea of ​​habitat, a multilevel concept and metaphor for an ideal physical and relational environment to be investigated in its manifold articulations—natural and artificial, and in its social and cultural implications.

From the Latin “habitare” “to live”—properly “he lives”, habitat is a term borrowed from natural science, referring to the set of physical and environmental conditions of a place in which a species finds the best conditions for survival.

As a physical space within an ecosystem, it is a place inhabited by one or more organisms and an ever-changing living system evoking such concepts as coexistence, adaptation, protection that have become central in the contemporary debate on new ways of rethinking the dialogue between human beings and the Earth.

If it is anthropized, it then turns into a social habitat whose features are determined by the coexistence of environmental, cultural and relational factors. Hence the idea of ​​habitat as a populated community space, where individuals trigger social, organizational and economic processes with the ultimate aim of living together in an environment, whether this is public, like a city or an office, or personal and intimate, such as home.

Besides the guiding theme of this edition, artists are invited to present an unpublished  site- specific project, designed to occupy one of the common spaces of the ALA headquarters in Naples,  within the Teatro Mediterraneo of  Mostra d’Oltremare.

The winning project will be awarded a cash prize of 10,000 EUR, necessary to cover the work’s production costs. Newly featured in this edition is the introduction of a fee for the artist who will receive a sum of 2,000 EUR for his/her work.

The prestigious 2022 Edition Jury, made up of international critics and curators is once again confirmed this year: Giovanni Carmine, Director of the Kunst Halle in San Gallo and curator of Art Basel Unlimited, Eugenio Viola, Chief Curator MAMBO - Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, Bogotá and Alessia Volpe, independent Curator and Director of the Ciaccia Levi Gallery in Paris.

One of the key objectives of the ALA Art Prize is set to be the desire to foster a dialogue between art, the workplace and its community, thus establishing a space for discussion between business and contemporary creativity.  To encourage such connection, once again ALA has chosen to involve the people who every day inhabit its spaces in the selection process of the winning art project.

The winning artwork will become part of ALA’s corporate art collection, together with the works of Alberto Tadiello, Luciferasi, and Mariangela Levita, UP, winners of the second and first edition of the ALA Art Prize, and with the works of Andrea Bolognino, Antonio Della Guardia and Giorgia Garzilli —the artists selected from the participants of the 1st edition of the award—acquired thanks to the ALA For Art Acquisition Program in 2022 in order to enrich the ALA collection.

For general enquiries: alaforart [​at​] alacorporation.com.