SUPERBLAST is open to all individual artists and artist collectives under 40 years of age.
We offer a platform for action and expression, production support, and a network which promotes artistic practice as one of its core values.

SUPERBLAST is a competition for multidisciplinary artists: 6 winners will become residents and will freely develop projects that interact with Manifattura Tabacchi’s spaces.

Each selected artist will be offered:

• a workshop in Manifattura Tabacchi dedicated to the exploration of the space and its surroundings, the choice of the spaces, and the scheduling of the residencies;
• € 5.000 towards production costs, and a studio in which to work;
• € 500 to cover travel and living expenses;
• a personal curator, chosen by the winner, who will accompany the artist during the residency to aide them in the writing of a critical text to develop a publication on their project;
• the exhibition of the artist’s work as part of the final exhibition and a publication at the conclusion of the residency.

The residency duration is flexible: between 5 May and 5 August 2021, each artist will choose the exact length of their stay based on the project they intend to develop. The six winners will be announced on 21 April.

Mario Cristiani was born in Calitri (Avellino, Campania) in 1964. He studied Sociology of Work at the University of Florence’s school of Political Sciences. In 1990, Cristiani founded Galleria Continua and the Continua Art Association with his friends Maurizio Rigillo and Lorenzo Fiaschi. Galleria Continua is located in a 1950s movie theatre, a deliberately unusual place for a contemporary art gallery. It is far from any large cities and modern urban sites, nestled in the small Tuscan town of San Gimignano, which boasts a rich, timeless history. In 2005, Galleria Continua inaugurated a new exhibition space in Beijing, China. Two years later, the gallery opened a singular site for contemporary creation in the Parisian countryside, at Boissy-le-Châtel (Seine-et-Marne). In 2015, Galleria Continua founded Arte CONTINUA Habana in Aguila de Oro, a 1950s movie theatre in the heart of Havana’s Chinatown. In 2020, on the occasion of the foundation’s 30th anniversary, the three business associates opened Continua’s fifth space in Rome inside the Hotel St. Regis. This year (2021), Galleria Continua Paris  will be opened in the centre of the city, just a few steps away from the Centre Pompidou in Marais. Cristiani is also President of the Continua Art Association, the non-profit organisation behind the Arte all’Arte project which has promoted Art, Architecture, and Landscape design for over ten years. Arte all’Arte is a global project whose aim is to establish a new relationship between the city and the countryside by forging new connections between Art, Architecture, and their natural surroundings, restoring art’s central role in the aesthetic design of cities and landscapes. The project has also promoted the charity campaign ArtexVino=Acqua and has organised various events whose funds were used to bring water to those areas of the world which suffer from severe droughts. 

Among the most recent events held by the Continua Association was the temporary installation SHY by Antony Gormley, held in Piazza Duomo in Prato (19 December 2020). The Association has also organised multiple educational Webinars featuring internationally renown hosts from the art world and beyond. 

In 2009, Mario Cristiani become President of the Scientific Committee of Arte Pollino ‘un altro sud’, a local development initiative that is part of the Sensi Contemporanei programme promoted by the Basilicata Region, the Minister of Economic Development and the Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities. Its objective is to promote and recognise the importance of one of Europe’s most beautiful nature reserves — the Pollino National Park — through contemporary art.

Erica Petrillo is a writer and curator based in Milan, where she currently works for the interdisciplinary agency 2050+.

Her main interest is to create, with others, temporary zones for reflection, exploration, and exchange. In previous years this urge manifested in public programs, which she curated for institutions as diverse as The Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she co-curated the R&D Salon program (2017-18); the XXII Triennale di Milano – Broken Nature, where she was responsible for the cycle of symposia accompanying the exhibition (2018-2019); the post-academic institute van Eyck Academie of Maastricht, where for her final project she opened a bar as a testing ground for exploring the social function and political potential of electronic music; and, currently, the Russian Pavilion of the forthcoming Venice Architecture Biennale, an adventure she has embarked on together with the team from 2050+.

Erica holds a Bachelor in Politics, Sociology and Psychology from the University of Cambridge (UK), a Bachelor in Political Sciences and International Relations from Università degli Studi di Milano, and a Master in Arts, Politics and Society from Maastricht University.

Stefano Mancuso is a Professor of Arboriculture and Plant Physiology at the University of Florence, and an academic at the Accademia dei Georgofili. He is the founder and director of the International Laboratory for Plant Neurobiology (LINV), which has sites in Florence and Kitakyushu, he is also a founding member of the International Society for Plant Signalling & Behaviour, and is widely held as a pioneer in the field of plant neurobiology.

In 2002 he was honoured with the European Award for Innovation and Research. In 2007 he held the role of International Expert on Traditional Knowledge for Sustainable Development at the UNCCD (the UN Convention to Combat Desertification). In 2010 he became the first Italian scientist to be a speaker at TED Global in Oxford, and in 2011 Stefano Mancuso and his research was selected for the United Nations’ ‘Bright Green Book’. In 2013 he was named as a ‘world changer’ by the New Yorker. 

The research of Stefano Mancuso has been published over 300 times in international scientific journals. He is the author of prize-winning books on plants, including the best-seller ‘Brilliant Green’, and his latest, ‘The Nation of Plants’. He is a regular contributor to the newspapers ‘La Repubblica’ and ‘Corriere della Sera’, and has collaborated with the national public broadcasting company RAI for the programmes ‘Geo & Geo’ and ‘Kilimanjaro’. He created the theatrical and musical show ‘Botanica’ with the group The Deproducers. Together with Carsten Höller, in 2018 he curated and created the exhibition ‘The Florence Experiment’ at Palazzo Strozzi. His exhibition ‘The Nation of Plants’ was one of the most visited at the XXII Triennale di Milano. In 2019, together with Thijs Bierkstar, he created the ‘Symbiosia’ artwork for the ‘Nous les arbres’ exhibition at the Cartier Foundation in Paris. 

Lucia Pietroiusti works at the intersection of art, ecology and systems, usually outside of the gallery format. She is the curator of Sun & Sea (Marina) – the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, 2019 (and its 2020-2022 international tour) as well as Curator of General Ecology at Serpentine Galleries. Pietroiusti is a co-founder, and occasional co-presenter, of the Serpentine Podcast. Together with writer Filipa Ramos, she initiated and currently curates The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish, a festival series, research and publication project on more-than-human consciousness. Pietroiusti is the co-editor (with Andrés Jaque and Marina Otero Verzier) of the publication, More-than-Human (2020). Forthcoming projects include Shanghai Biennale 2021 (co-curator) and POWER NIGHT, E-Werk Luckenwalde (curator), both in Spring 2021. 

Caterina Taurelli Salimbeni is a curator and journalist currently based in Florence, where she coordinates the contemporary art projects at Manifattura Tabacchi. She has worked in several art galleries in Cape Town, Rome and Venice. Caterina collaborates with Inside Art’s editorial staff and has co-curated the exhibitions of the tenth and eleventh edition of the Talent Prize. She holds a Bachelor in Cultural Heritage Management from the Bocconi university in Milan and a master’s degree in contemporary art and media from the HEC university in Paris.

Edoardo Aruta was born in Rome in 1981. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in his native city and at the IUAV University in Venice. During his studies, he also worked as scenographer and stagehand for theatre and cinema productions. Since 2003, Aruta’s work has been displayed in exhibitions in Italy and abroad. In 2013, he founded the artist collective Gli Impresari in Venice, with Marco Di Giuseppe and Rosario Sorbello. Aruta’s artistic practice is based on the examination of the phenomena underlying the experience of daily life, from the interaction with places and the relationship between people and ‘objects’ to the possibilities of exploring the real and fictitious meanings that surround them.

Antonio Bermúdez Obregon was born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1991, where he continues to live and work. His work has been displayed in exhibitions at the notable Espacio El Dorado and the SGR Galería (Bogotá). Obregon’s work has been exhibited internationally at the Humboldt Forum (Berlin) and the Jan Van Eyck Academie (Maastricht). Obregon is a visual researcher and architect, and his dual practice intertwines territory and its different meanings working within the intersection of culture and land. His work deals with topics such as orientation, geopolitics, toponymy, colonialism, exoticism and the imaginary of nations.

Federica Di Pietrantonio was born in Rome in 1996, where she currently lives and works. She studied painting at the Rome University of Fine Arts. Di Pietrantonio graduated in 2019, and based her research on the thesis spending free time at KASK (Ghent), where she developed the project ‘Vacation Spot’. In 2017, Di Pietrantonio was selected for Mediterranea 18 Young Artists Biennale and the following year she started working at Spazio In Situ as artist and web designer. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Las Palmas (Lisbon), Gouvernement (Ghent), and the Una Vetrina gallery and The Gallery Apart in Rome. Her work centres on the relationships and processes which arise from simulations, virtual reality, and social media platforms.

Iper-Collettivo (Giulia Landini, Prato, 1992; Lorenzo Romaniello, Pistoia, 1988; Lorenzo Vacirca, Prato, 1988; Marco Conti, Prato, 1988) is a multidisciplinary artist collective formed by four young professionals with different backgrounds. Iper-Collettivo is united by an interest for experimentation, sustainability, and interactive forms of expression. The group shares a vision for art, architecture and ecology and explores the relationship between the territory and its communities through the realisation of socially inclusive projects that invite community participation.

Oliviero was born in Osimo in 1992. For the past ten years, he has lived and worked in Milano. With one foot in his hometown and the other in the vibrant urban hub, Fiorenzi has developed a unique sensibility for the theme of natural landscapes. His personal life experience has inspired him to build complex figurative sign apparati, thanks to which he enters into a relationship with the context in which he works, producing pictorial and sculptural installations. Fiorenzi’s work has been displayed in many galleries, foundations, and museums, including The Address (Brescia), Sonnenstube (Lugano), Fondazione Feltrinelli and La Triennale (Milano), Ex-Dogana (Roma) and La Mole (Ancona).

Violette was born in Bourg la Reine in 1984. She is a French-Italian artist who works in the field of contemporary art. She has exhibited internationally in several experimental and institutional spaces such as the National Art Museum of China (Beijing), the ex-showroom Gavina and the Museum of Modern Art in Bologna, the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, the Museum fur Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt am Main), Palazzina dei Bagni Misteriosi and Fondazione Feltrinelli (Milan). Among other prizes she was awarded in 2016, Maillard won the XIII edition of the New York Prize and has been artist-in-residence at ISCP, International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York. In 2019 she won the first edition of the Italy-China Prize and has been artist-in-residence at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing.

KINS by Radio Papesse is a series podcasts in four episodes, to re-listen to voices, sounds, connections and unexpected affinities from NAM – Not A Museum’s first winter. NAM is Manifattura Tabacchi’s contemporary art platform.

A video documentary which collects interventions by SUPERCATASTROFE protagonists, the third edition of God is Green. God is Green is Manifattura Tabacchi’s festival dedicated to sustainability and our future and is produced by NAM – Not A Museum, curated by NERO, with Medusa, Not, Parasite 2.0, Threes, Andreco, Clara Ciccioni, Federica Timeto and Miriam Tola.