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Artist

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Marisol Mendez

Nominated in

2025

Fundació Foto Colectania

Lives and Works in

Marisol Mendez uses her camera to study the tension between truth and fiction, the tight relationship between what a photograph creates and the (sur)real it comes from. Driven by research-led and self-initiated projects, she seeks to deconstruct traditional modes of representation and weave nuanced narratives with multiple layers of meaning. At the heart of her artistic pursuit lies the exploration of humankind. Marisol is moved by the desire to build genuine connections with the people on the other side of the lens. Her objective is to encapsulate the intimacy of shared experiences, the tenderness or friction of mutual recognition. Embracing the horizontality of images, she utilizes a diverse array of visual languages to tell stories that traverse the boundaries between individual experience, collective memory, and imagination. Rooted in the landscapes and folklore of her Bolivian culture, Marisol’s work oscillates between candid and staged, naturalistic and mythical.

Projects

2023

Padre

Padre is a personal and political excavation of masculinity, approached through a feminist lens. Rooted in my family history and shaped by my Latin American heritage, the project interrogates the embedded structures of machismo that govern men’s behaviors andthe emotional landscapes of those around them. Oscillating between social critique and selfinquiry, Padre traces a lineage of absence, tenderness, violence, and care, mapping the way masculine identity is inherited, performed, and, at times, unlearned. The project began with a set of letters written by my grandfather to my father and uncle. These intimate correspondences unfold like generational echoes, revealing how men within my family struggled to make sense of fatherhood, masculinity, and emotional responsibility. Through them, I became a witness to the contradictions at the heart of patriarchal identity: the longing for connection eclipsed by societal expectations of toughness and emotional restraint; the desire to nurture overtaken by the compulsion to dominate. In Padre, staged portraits, archival interventions, and symbolic gestures challenge traditional representations of manhood. Hunting, both literal and metaphorical, operates as a central motif, evoking masculine drives toward conquest and control. This narrative is unsettled byimages of vulnerability and the fragility of bodies and bonds. Scenes of decay and erosion echo the slow unravelling of hegemonic masculinity, whose ideals persist as ghostly remnants of a past that still haunts the present. By juxtaposing softness with brutality, presence with absence, Padre opens a space for reflection, asking not only what masculinity is, but what it could become.

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Marisol Mendez

was nominated by

Fundació Foto Colectania

2025

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Each year every member of the FUTURES European Photography Platform nominates a set of artists and projects to become part of the FUTURES network.

The five artists selected for FUTURES are Claudia Amatruda (Foggia, 1995), Matteo Buonomo (Milan, 1991), Benedetta Casagrande (Milan, 1993), Alessio Pellicoro (Taranto, 1994) and Martina Zanin (San Daniele del Friuli, 1994). This selection consolidates the nature of this program as an observatory of the medium, developing a broad perspective of its practices today in the Italian context and examining the ways in which the digital and new aesthetics are changing its fruition. It includes refined operations that present both research with a return to its function as a document, as well as experiments that question the medium's ideas of form, truth, and identity. The aim is to show how photography is a medium in perpetual transformation and expansion, which brings together experiences of a documentary nature on social and cultural themes, and others that emphasize formal and conceptual research.

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Amatruda reflects on the transformations of his own body due to a rare degenerative disease. Looking at Donna Haraway's theories on the union between cyborgs and humans, she transforms her body into a theatre of reception for external elements, highlighting possible contaminations and metamorphoses through self-portraiture.

‍Bonomo's work focuses on long-term projects focusing on the social context trying to read the dynamics of loneliness and sharing that run through contemporary society. His photographic stories are enriched by textual and investigative insights.

‍Casagrande uses the medium of photography to be in relationship with the surrounding environment and its elements. She analyses ecological coexistence with the non-human living world and explores the ways in which we relate to them: intraspecific coexistence and the possibility of constructing new forms of kinship and intimacy between species in a context of unprecedented loss of variety of living organisms.

The elements that characterize Pellicoro's research are the ambiguous relationship with reality, the role of immobility and movement, the post photographic inclination and the testimonial approach. A result that, on the one hand, is due to the subjects filmed; on the other, to the interest in representing unconscious drives or autobiographical issues.

‍Zanin's research is intertwined with his personal experiences and draws on references from literature and psychoanalysis to interrogate the notions of absence, memory, aggression, repetition, patriarchy, and heritage. She invites the viewer to reflect on the ambiguity of power dynamics, focusing on the fine line between protection and control and turning her attention to vulnerable positions.

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List of curators

Giangavino Pazzola – Curator of contemporary and research programs at CAMERA

Walter Guadagnini – Director at CAMERA

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Nominators

Arianna Catania | Director of Gibellina Photoroad / Open Air & Site-specific Festival

Matteo Balduzzi | Curator of MUFOCO – Museum of Contemporary Photography of Milano-Cinisello Balsamo

Marco Delogu | Photographer and President of Azienda Speciale Palaexpo - Rome

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