Umberto Ciceri (Milan, 1961) lives and works in Barcelona.

After his early studies in art and fashion design, he has been for decades a prolific creative and Art Director for the collections of textiles, prints and embroidery of the major fashion firms such as Versace, Moschino, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Armani, Chanel, Hermés, Gucci, among others.

Active in the art world since 2007, he cultivates his creativity around patterns and textures, developing his personal research on neurophysiology and colours atomic physics. Ciceri’s artistic practice is divided into two main axes, different in content and representation techniques.

One has social purposes and uses sound installations, video projections and performance.

The other is based on neuroaesthetic studies, a personal evolution of kinetic technique which gets people to move in front of the work in a ritual perceptive of temporal coincidence. The constant element in the video installations is the association and ambiguity between the high definition of the text to be read and the low definition of the images to be watched. The artist records with an HD video camera but purposely films out of focus, encouraging an emotional contrast between the descriptive logic of the words in focus and the logic of the sensation in the blurry films: the entire work indeed hinges on these ethical and aesthetic ambiguities.

In the works based on neuroaesthetic studies, “moving” in antithesis to immobility acquires an existential meaning: regeneration against stasis. The shifted motion of the spectators is thus the motion of the works in which they are reflected.

Umberto Ciceri is represented by international galleries, took part in the 54th Venice Biennale of Art in the Italian Pavilion, and his works are in prestigious private collections around the world.

Ciro Frank Schiappa was born in 1971 in Dublin, Ireland. He studied photography at Fondazione Studio Marangoni in Firenze, Italy.

His photographs have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the 1997 European Young Artist Biennial in Torino, the international photography festival of Arles, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Galleria Civica in Modena, his hometown.

Schiappa's twin photographic interests in portraiture and architecture have continued to develop in his subsequent series beginning with his Circostanze Familiari and continuing on to include Leicamix and Maremmana in which he focuses on how human nature relates to the environment.

In 2016 he published New York Serenade a book about history of rock in New York City. He has more than twenty years of experience as professional photographer in editorials and advertising campaigns.

Schiappa lives and works between Barcelona and Milan.

A graduate of the University of Florence with a degree in Architecture, David Scognamiglio (Bologna, 1980) also studied at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Montpellier and the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

He is currently enrolled in the master’s degree in Artistic Production and Research at the University of Barcelona.

His work is informed by matter as narrative object and space as a place of emotions. His research is concerned with the relationship between the artwork and the viewer, in the resulting emotive impression that a work of art will leave on its viewer.

He participated in a number of solo and group exhibitions.

Among them: E-E-01, Museo de la Universidad de Alicante, Spain (2018); Incertum, Museo delle Miniere, Montecatini Val di Cecina, Italy (2017); Pluvium, Italian Institute of Culture, Santiago, Chile (2017); De Rivus, Galería NAC, Santiago, Chile (2016); Electric Avenue, Galería Monoambiente, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2015); L’Origine, Nuit Blanche, Paris, France (2014).

He lives and works in Barcelona.

Fabrizio Contarino (Taormina, 1976) moved to Barcelona in 2003 and subsequently received a master’s degree in Artistic Production and Research from Barcelona University.

His work is mainly centred on drawing, also expanding to other practices such as photography, illustration and video installation.

The use of different materials and techniques – namely paper, pen, ink, silk-screen printing and digital tools – is at the core of his creative production.

The artist's imagination is fed by a wide range of sources from both high and popular culture and his work, often laden with irony and a form of social commentary, focuses on topics related to the transmission or manipulation of information and on memory.

He participated in numerous international exhibitions in Spain, Italy, Greece, Colombia and Korea, was a contributor to Rojo magazine from 2002 to 2011, and his work has been published in a number of magazines throughout Europe.

A visual storyteller, Mattia Insolera (Bologna, 1977) starts his professional career in 2003 as tour photographer of the Italian singer Vasco Rossi. From 2005 to 2009 he is represented by Grazia Neri Agency, and his photographs are published in magazines worldwide. In 2002 he is the recipient of the Iceberg Award, promoted by the Municipality of Bologna, in 2003 of the Canon Italia Award. In 2004 of the Fnac European Talent Latent Award. In 2005 Damiani Editore publishes his photographic book Sfrido, a project promoted by the Municipality of Bologna.

Based in Barcelona since 2007, he enrols in the Photojournalism course run by the Graduate School of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. In 2008 he is awarded the Professional Scholarship of the Albarracin Photojournalism seminar run by Gervasio Sánchez, in 2009 the Photography Award from the Biennial of Girona as well as a World Press Photo Award in the Daily Life category.

In 2009-2010 the National Council for Culture and Arts – CoNCA funds his projects Limbo and Transmediterranea. In 2010 he wins the Mare Nostrum Award, promoted by the Grimaldi Shipping Company. In 2011 he collaborates with the NGO Doctors without Borders to the project From Hell to Limbo, documenting the migration flows through the southern Mediterranean. In 2012 he was invited for an artist in residence program by the Grid Fotofestival (Netherlands).

In 2013 he won the Fotopres Award promoted by the Caixa Foundation, to document the struggle of young Afghans migrants in Greece. In 2014 he was the recipient of the MIA Award of the MIA Photographic Fair. In 2015 he was able to publish his first photo book 6th Continent, thanks to a crowdfunding campaign that reached the 115% of the goal. This project was exhibited at Cortona’s International Photography Festival On The Move, in the Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki, in the Civic Museum in Macerata and in the international festival of photography and art of Monopoli PhEST.

He is currently working on the photographic project AILATIDITALIA on twentyseven Italian products of excellence within the food sector. Insolera is represented by Luz photo Agency.

Giuliana Racco (Toronto, Canada, 1976) has been based in Europe since 2002.

She completed her graduate degree in Visual Arts at the IUAV University in Venice, and later worked as an Assistant Professor in the visual arts courses held by Lewis Baltz.

Key international roles include the coordination of the Czech and Slovak Pavilion for the Biennale di Venezia (2008-2011) as well as creative direction of the Encounters program for Juntos Aparte, curated by Alex and Luis Miguel Brahim as part of the Bienal Sur (2017). She is head translator for MONOS Editions and was head translator and researcher for Migropolis: An Atlas of a Global Situation (Hatje Cantz, 2009).

She is currently a member of the Programme Commission of Hangar Centre for Artistic Research and Production. Drawing on fieldwork, archival research and collective narration, Racco constantly questions the filters through which basic concepts of Western culture are perceived.

She is interested in language processes, desire and movement, merging both the intellectual and emotional, the poetic and the political, particularly concerning workers, migrants and refugees.

Her work is formalized through drawing, print and digital media, installation and public intervention.

Matteo Guidi (Cesena, Italy, 1978) living in Barcelona, develops a practice that is situated at the intersection between contemporary art and social anthropology, and whose central theme reflects on material culture. Based on the observation of different social groups or people, he analyses how they relate to their everyday objects, focusing on possible new uses and giving them new symbologies. From here, it generates a critical and subtle work that at the same time is loaded with poetry. The projects are developed in different disciplines such as photography, drawing, video or installation. He teaches at ISIA Urbino University (Italy).

He collaborates with GREDITS (Grup de Recerca en Disseny i Transformació Social) and is a member of A/A Network (Art and Anthropology Network) and CoMoDo (Comunicar Moltiplica Deberes). He is the founder of the project Cooking in Maximum Security and co-founder of the project The Artist and the Stone. His works have been exhibited in various collective and individual exhibitions: Bienal Sur (I biennial of Latin America), Cucúta (Colombia); Festival Loop, La Capella, Homesession, Galería Àngels Espai 2, Fundación Suñol, Arts Santa Mònica, Museu del Disseny, Galeria AB9, Bienal de Valls; Bienal d'Amposta, MAGASIN Centre d'Art Contemporaine (Grenoble); Por Estos Dias, Medellin (Colombia); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield (UK) and Fondazione Pastificio Cerere (Rome).

He has given conferences and workshops in different national and international contexts such as: Escola massana, Casa Asia, Universitat de Barcelona, CaixaForum and La Virreina Centre de l'Imatge, MAGASIN Centre d'Art Contemporaine, Free University of Bozen (Bolzano); Museo d'Arte Moderna di Cagliari; Akademie der Künste der Welt (Cologne), ESAD School of Art and Design, Matosinho and Academia de Bellas Artes de Cidade do Oporto; International Academy of Art Palestine (Ramallah).

• Centro de arte Lo pati, Amposta (E)
• Stone Masons Cooperative Museum, Oporto (P)
• Museum of Academy of Fine Art of the City of Porto (P)

Marco Noris (Bergamo, Italy, 1971) lives and works in Barcelona. Having left Bergamo at the end of the 1990s, he lived in Ferrara and Bologna before moving to Barcelona in 2003. A drawer and painter in essence, Noris made a foray into the world of video art, net art and photography before re-establishing and re-focusing his artistic practice on painting. Since 2015 he experienced painting as a means to develop performative experiences as an extension of his studio work. More recently, he took up walking as an aesthetic and artistic practice with the project On the Border (2017, Barcelona Producció award) and the most recent La entrega (2018, Art i Natura grant from La Panera de Lleida together with the CAN de Farrera, Spain).

In Spain his work has been exhibited in Barcelona (La Capella, Galería Trama, Cyan Gallery, Galeria Esther Montoriol, Galeria Contrast, Galeria H2O, The Private Space, Casa Elizalde, Can Felipa, Espai M at La Escocesa, Galeria Sicart, etc.), in Madrid (Matadero), in Castellón (Galería Cànem), in Vic (Roman Temple of Vic, 5th Biennial) and in La Jonquera (MuME – Exile Memorial Museum). He has also taken part in exhibitions and festivals in the United States (New York, The Active Space, 2014), in Italy (Different Pulses, 2013, and ParmaPoesia, 2002) and in France (Paris, Centre Pompidou, 2002).

Over the past twenty years, in parallel to his artistic activities, Noris created or collaborated on different group projects, starting in Bologna, Italy, in the 1990s with a series of collaborative projects in digital fields. Between 2005 and 2015 he founded and managed La Escocesa, a centre for artistic creation that has been included in Barcelona City Council’s art factory project since 2008. In May 2018, he co-founded Fase, a centre for artistic creation and thought in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona). Between 2015 and 2017 he was artist in residence at Hangar, a centre of art research and production in Barcelona, and he is currently an artist in residence at Piramidón, a contemporary art centre in Barcelona.

Ivana Pinna (Nurri, 1976), a multidisciplinary artist, was born in a small town of only 2500 inhabitants situated in the centre of Sardinia. After graduating in Political Science, she left Italy and lived in England, Belgium, France, Germany, China and Switzerland before moving to Barcelona in 2017.

In her work we find different languages, materials, techniques and disciplines. In the last few years she furthered her research on the body, practicing yoga, aerial dance and other methodologies. This type of commitment led her to a deepening of sensory perception, together with a greater awareness of the practice of breathing, of body consciousness and of the surrounding space. Her research is reflected in her latest work, characterized by activities that require concentration, patience and a long process of implementation. Some of these are distinguished by actions that depend upon the natural passage of time, in which the emphasis is on the process rather than on the final result. Ivana Pinna exhibited in several countries including Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, Greece, France and Italy. Lately she worked on a number of participatory projects, directly involving the public in the creative process and collaborating with other artists in trans-disciplinary projects. She is the founder of the IVYnode project, whose goal is the promotion of culture, art, environment and innovation within small territorial communities, among which Nurri, her place of birth, which still maintains its authenticity but that faces the problems of depopulation and loss of identity especially within the younger generation.

Laura Cazzaniga (a.k.a. Laura Pinta Cazzaniga). Site-specific artist.

A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, specialising in Painting under Luciano Fabro, Laura Cazzaniga (Cantù, 1981) also attended courses in Art, Architecture and the Territory at the Faculty of Architecture of Roma Tre University in Rome.

She subsequently completed a research period in Vito Acconci’s studio in New York before moving to Spain.

Her practice is concerned with specific historical, political and social contexts and is formalised through site-specific installations as well as ephemeral interventions or direct actions within urban settings or areas of political-social conflict.

Cazzaniga developed and curated projects on activism, historical memory, human rights and the status of women together with several collectives and artistic groups, and her work has been presented in Biennials and in national and international art exhibitions such as the 54° Venice Biennale (Italian Pavilion, 2011), the XIV Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean BJCEM (Skopje, 2009), and organised performances in Spain, Italy and Greece.

Her research is often conducted autonomously and outside of institutional contexts.

She currently lives in Barcelona.

Following his studies at IED, the European Institute of Design, in Milan, Motiscause (Pisa, 1966) specialises in Architectural Composition with Prof. Gian Carlo Leoncilli Massi at the Faculty of Architecture of Florence University.

His training path allows him to come into contact with Bruno Munari, one of the great protagonists of the world of design and culture of the twentieth century.

A multifaceted artist and a 'craftsman', Motiscause's works range from painting, drawing, sculpture and installation to experimentation in jewellery.

In 2007 he undertakes the renovation of an abandoned warehouse in the centre of Barcelona to create SpazioTransformer, a unique space which he treats like a canvas where he designs and builds a series of unique pieces that lie between art and design.

A resident of Barcelona since 2004, his works have been exhibited in national and international contexts.

Among his solo shows: Fogli Nudi (2018), iPazziFactory, Pisa; Missed Calls (2018), Cage Gallery, Barcelona; Reflexiones en un interior (clandestino) (2017), Galería H2o, Barcelona.

In 2016 his work is shown in the group exhibition Subjective Reality at SheShan MOCA and Forbidden City Gallery in Shanghai. In the same year he is selected by the Sydney Mishkin Gallery, New York.

In 2015 he exhibits at the Matadero in Madrid for Summa Contemporary Art Fair and is selected by the Museum of Design in Barcelona for the group exhibition Sintesi '90 with the installation Sons de Paper. In Barcelona he participates in the experimental project Villa Nurbs (2007) under the direction of architect Enric-Ruiz Geli. Between December 2013 and January 2014 Motiscause is part of the jury of educators in charge of the architecture and design workshops at the Enric Miralles Foundation in Barcelona.

In 2012 he founds Studio Motiscause together with Francesca Regni (Corinaldo, 1978) - its curator and project manager -, a studio for the creation of unique pieces and contemporary art based in Barcelona.

Luca Pagliari (Italy, 1965) is an artist specializing in photography. He lives and works in Barcelona.

Pagliari studied art and photography under the guidance of Luigi Ghirri, Bernd and Hilla Becher and Brian Young at UDP – Università del Progetto in Reggio Emilia, the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, the Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf and the International Center for Photography in New York.

His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums at an international level, is part of public and private collections and has been published in books and magazines in several countries.

Among the main exhibitions are those in the Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York, the Fifty-One Fine Art Photography in Antwerp, the Galerie du Château d'Eau de Toulouse, the International Museum of Photography in Brescia, as well as publications with National Geographic Books, Harper's Magazine, Pushkin Press and Ivory Press, and the acquisition of works from SFMoMA in San Francisco, the Musée de la Photographie de Charleroi and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

In addition, Luca Pagliari is an artistic consultant and curator. He chairs educational projects, teaches and participates in seminars and conferences. He writes articles and essays on art and culture, with a specific interest in the philosophy of photography. He is a member of the Leonardo associations - The International Society for the Arts, Science and Technology and Resources for Art Photography in Spain, Ministry of Culture.

Among his educational activities, the creation of the degree course in Photography for IDEP in Barcelona - Universitat Abat Oliva – CEU, and his role as Director of Studies and Professor in the same degree course. He teaches Photography at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - Center de la Imatge, Multimèdia de Terrassa Technology, at the European Institute of Design (IED) in Barcelona and collaborates with the International Photography Center of New York and the Centro de the Imagen in Lima.

He currently teaches and directs the professional Photography Masters of the Seeway Academy of Barcelona - San Jorge University of Zaragoza.

Filippo Minelli (Brescia, 1983) graduates with honours from the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, Milan, specialising in Art and New Media.

His academic education goes alongside the interventions in public spaces that already characterized his research in previous years. Through his practice Minelli analyses issues in fields such as architecture, politics, communication and geography, using them as the basis for creating installations and performances documented through photography and video.

With an interest in landscape and public spaces, his work is mostly aimed at questioning the role of identity and its narrative in nature and in the digital world.

Attracted by borders more than by nations, he develops his practice following a research based on the aesthetics of protest, bringing politics to an anthropological and introspective level by decontextualising the use of tear gas, reversing the function of flags and borrowing from the aesthetics of protest slogans.

After several projects abroad in solo and group exhibitions, in 2011 he resumes his focus on his homeland, devoting himself to re-reading the contemporary landscape of northern Italy and publishing the book Atlante dei Classici Padani(Padania Classics).

His work has been exhibited at the Münchner Stadtmuseum (Munich), Total Museum (Seoul), La Triennale di Milano (Milan), East Wing Biennial (London), Manifesta 12 (Palermo), ArtScience Museum (Singapore), Museu do Som e Imagem (São Paulo), Biennale di Venezia 2011 (Venice), Centro Cultural Recoleta (Buenos Aires), MACRO (Rome), and was reviewed over the years by some of the major international media outlets such as Le Monde, The New York Times, Harpers, Huffington Post, CNN and Al Jazeera.

Since 2007 Minelli has been invited and selected by a number of institutions for research projects, residences and conferences; among them: Aarhus University (DK), National Centre for Contemporary Arts (RU), Gyeonggi Creation Center (KR), Architecture Pavilion (IT), Epicenter Projects (USA), European Photography (IT), Centro Cultural de Belém (PT), Total Museum of Contemporary Arts (KR), IULM University (IT) and UCL (UK).

He lives and works between Barcelona and Asunción, Paraguay.