Mediterranean contemporary art prize

The Mediterranean contemporary art prize is the biennial prize conceived by the Porta Coeli Foundation to produce systematic and substantial solicitations in contemporary art, promoting the development of an environment that encourages the creation of relations with those many specificities of territories and society that characterise Italy. In order to produce frictions, encounters and exchanges of collective and mutual interest, the Foundation creates the conditions for the connection of an international artistic community with instances and roots of
geographical, cultural and anthropological contexts of high value and certain peculiarities.

The prize is held in high standing venues that are historically tended towards multicultural integration due to its central position in the Mediterranean area. Here dominations, encounters and clashes between peoples have produced an extraordinary mix that emerges and reveals itself in the urban forms, in the lexicon, in the gastronomy, in the social and symbolic structures used by the people to produce a mental image of the world. The Mediterranean becomes the conceptual representation of a border that is not a line but space, not the place of a contrast between two opposing voices but the place of a plural conversation. It is a space in which peoples lookout in search of mutual osmotic relationships, projection and aspiration. This idea inspires the Mediterranean contemporary art prize. 

Therefore, the founding concept of the prize is the multicultural thought of Frederick II, Duke of Swabia, who has left numerous castles and territorial garrisons in Basilicata. From here, he governed his empire through the promulgation of the Constitutions of Melfi (Potenza), the most significant code of law in the Middle Ages. Emperor Frederick II, nicknamed Stupor Mundi (Wonder of the world), had intuited and promoted the concept of the universality of human knowledge. He was the spiritual father of a different idea of Europe with its centre in the Mediterranean sea. He found a strong representation of multiculturalism as a political method in an architecture capable of merging the Arab world with northern Europe, the Romanesque consistency with the dematerialisation of Byzantine mosaics. 

The prize chooses for this year castle of Norman-Swabian ancestry: The Castle of Monteserico, in the Genzano di Lucania area (Potenza).
The Mediterranean contemporary art prize application is open to all artists, regardless of age, gender, nationality, or any other qualification. Indeed, the main purpose of the prize is to build a plural and inclusive event.  

There are four categories of the prize in the 2021 edition:
— painting
— sculpture and installation
— photography and video art
— graphics and illustration
Each artist can participate in the selection phase by filling the form.