Biography:
B3 Festival of the Moving Image is awarding this year's honorary prize in the art category to American-Italian artist Federico Solmi.
In his socio-critical cross-media artworks, he always holds up the flag of democracy.
Federico Solmi, born in Bologna, Italy in 1973, has been living in New York since 1999. His groundbreaking work was recognized with the award of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 2009. Solo museum surveys include American Circus at the Haifa Museum of Art in Haifa, Israel, in 2016; The Grand Masquerade at the Tarble Art Center in Charleston, Illinois, in 2019; and Joie de Vivre at the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey, in 2022–23. His upcoming solo show The Great Farce is scheduled to open at the Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, in Chicago, in September 2024.
His work was included in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s traveling exhibition The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today. In 2021, he was featured in the Phillips Collection’s centennial exhibition Seeing Differently. He has participated in several international biennial exhibitions, including the SITE Santa Fe Biennial in New Mexico in 2010; Venice Biennale in 2011.
From 2016 to 2019, Solmi was Visiting Professor at Yale University School of Art and Yale School of Drama, New Haven, Connecticut. He was appointed Guest Critic at the Yale University School of Art for 2022.
The Great Farce, American Circus, The Painting Class