«The organizational machine of Fiere di Parma will dive deeper into MIA fair’s reality, realizing improvements to evolve it on an international scale» – Founder and Director of MIA, Fabio Castelli
MIA Fair 2023
MIA – Milan Image Art Fair, the long-standing Italian fair entirely dedicated to photography, is ready to return to the Italian Fashion capital for its 12th edition from the twenty-third to the twenty-sixth of March at SUPERSTUDIO MAXI, in Milan.
This year, for the first time, the fair has been organized by Fiere di Parma, along with the founder and director Fabio Castelli and the town of Milan. This edition aims even further to attract a larger number of international collectors, buyers, artists and gallerists, as well as establishing new partnerships.
Davide Bramante, represented by Fabbrica Eos Milano
As it happens on every edition, a new artist has been chosen to be relied on for the image of the MIA 2023: Davide Bramante, an internationally known exponent of Italian photography, represented by Fabbrica Eos Milano. The image that was selected from Bramante’s works is ‘MIA MI’ (taken from the series Città Ideali), a visual representation of the relationship between MIA fair and Milan, achieved by combining the Duomo with different images that tend to emphasize the multicultural traits of the city.
MIA Fair 2023 will host one-hundred exhibitors, eighty galleries (thirty percent of them coming from abroad), that will be the protagonists of the Main section, and sixteen special projects.
BNL Gruppo BNP Paribas, Xiaomi and Spada & Partners
For the twelfth consecutive year, BNL Gruppo BNP Paribas is partner of MIA Fair in the role of Main Sponsor together with the partners from the previous years (such as Eberhard & Co) and two new entries: Xiaomi and Spada & Partners.
Xiaomi, an electronics and smartphones company, will present ‘Ricordi Stampati’, a special project made with Settimio Benedusi consisting of a series of portraits that were taken using the recently released Xiaomi 13 Pro.
Spada & Partners, a financial advisory group, supported MIA, giving particular attention to the project ‘Underskin, Stories from Iran’.
Design Italy: e-commerce platform for MIA Fair 2023
Design Italy is once again confirmed as the official e-commerce platform for MIA Fair 2023, by permanently selling all the works from selected artists among the ones exhibited by the galleries at the fair. Moreover, for this year edition, the media partner ‘Instagramers Milano’, organized a new photography challenge on Instagram, representing love in all its shapes with the hashtag #AmoreMiaFair. The contents, selected by the photographer Settimio Benedusi, will all be reposted on official accounts.
Reportage Beyond Reportage: MIA Fair
There will be the presentation of ‘Reportage Beyond Reportage’ curated by Emanuela Mazzonis di Prelafera, a project that strives to highlight the different shades of reportage, from documentary photography, photojournalism to street photography.
The selected galleries for this project worked with artists that focus on telling stories of life, war, migration, freedom, hope, natural and climatic disasters, sports and a sense of sharing. All these photographers aim to testify, tell, reveal, make people aware of what is happening in the world and help them to understand its complexity.
Beyond Photography – Dialogue, curated by Domenico De Chirico
There will also be the return of the section ‘Beyond Photography – Dialogue’ curated by Domenico De Chirico, a space for galleries with an activity focused on promoting international artists, whose exhibition project focuses on creating a dialogue between photography and other media such as sculpture, installation, painting and video.
Moreover, BDC – Bonanni Del Rio Catalog sponsored the second edition of ‘La Nuova Scelta Italiana’, an award that aims to confer value to those artists that are slowly changing the language of photography and are part of its evolution. This year’s winners are Luca Campigotto and Paola De Pietri, who are going to exhibit their works at MIA Fair 2023 and at the headquarters of BDC28.
Underskin, Stories from Iran, curated by Rischa Paterlini
Strongly desired by Fabio Castelli, there will be ‘Underskin, Stories from Iran’ curated by Rischa Paterlini, a selection of works by Iranian artists, both emerging and established, residing in Iran or abroad and represented by galleries from different continents, that aims to raise awareness of the battle Iranian women are waging for the world will.
Underskin will also offer several collateral events alongside the exhibition: on the 25th of March two Masterclasses about the role of art in the Iranian situation will be held; Iranian visual artist Shirin Neshat, MAXXI director Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, curator Ilaria Bernardi, artist Sarah Doraghi, collector Roberto Spada and journalist Francesca Mannocchi will be speaking after the screening of an extract from the docufilm ‘We Iranian Women’ written and directed by Sabina Fedeli and Anna Migotto and produced by 3D PRODUCTIONS and there will be a space within the fair dedicated to Sarah Doraghi and her photographic series on ‘the forbidden face’ of Iran.
Visitors will also have the opportunity to further explore the themes of Underskin thanks to a podcast, produced in collaboration with Giornale dell’Arte and available on an on-demand platform and the main broadcasting channels (Spotify, Apple Podcast, Speaker) after the end of the exhibition.
MIA Fair partnerships
After the event, the miramART association by Grand Hotel Miramare in Santa Margherita Ligure will reward a participant of the project with the acquisition of one of his or her works, which will become part of their collection.
Furthermore, for this edition, Deloitte Italia is sponsoring the ‘Deloitte Photo Grant’ international photographic contest, meanwhile, there is going to be a comeback of the health and well-being advanced Technology research center and Icone (San Raffaele), in partnership with ETT SpA, with an interactive installation called ‘Metaverso NEFFIE’, together with a cycle of meetings.
Lastly, the BAG- Bocconi Art Gallery MIA Fair partnership is presenting ‘Arquitectonica’ by Gianluca Pollini, an exhibition of fifteen photographs dedicated to architecture that will be displayed within the space dedicated to art photography of Bocconi University of Milan.
Artificial Hell: when AI meets art – Riccardo Boccuzzi
For the 2023 edition, Eberhard & Co, MIA Fair partner for ten years, brought to the fair ‘Artificial Hell’, a project made by the director, screenwriter, and new media expert Riccardo Boccuzzi.
This artwork is composed of a series of pieces that were created by telling the story of the Inferno from Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia to an artificial intelligence. In order to make the artificial intelligence understand the story of the Divina Commedia and turn it into figurative art, Boccuzzi had to select some parts and to translate them into practical information, after ten thousand attempts the result eventually has been obtained.
Boccuzzi explains: «These works are realized through an AI machine that generates images ex novo by interpolating data within the ether, starting from semantic descriptions as input. I’ve chosen Dante Alighieri’s Inferno cantica, I’ve extrapolated the triplets that were the most evocative for me to translate the Dantesca beauty into pictorial images and I’ve made ten thousand attempts to be able to generate two hundred coherent images that would narrate all inferno’s thirty-four cantos».
Therefore, MIA fair 2023’s visitors are going to be able to look at a selection of ‘Artificial Hell’, from the encounter with the Minotaur, the circle of avarice and prodigality, to Paolo and Francesca’s Canto, a collection that puts together art, science, technology, literature, AI and ‘divine enlightenment’. The whole project ‘Artificial Hell’, curated by Elisabetta Bruscolini, will be displayed at the MAXXI museum (Rome) from July to October 2023.
MIA Fair 2023’s Awards: BNL Gruppo and the New Post Photography Award
One of MIA fair’s main features is the presence of various awards that are assigned every year to artists and photographers. BNL Gruppo BNP Paribas, MIA Fair’s main sponsor, promotes for the twelfth year in a row the BNL Gruppo BNP Paribas Award, already assigned by a jury to fifteen of the artists that are exhibiting their works in the fair with their own reference galleries.
MIA Fair 2023 is presenting the fourth edition of the New Post Photography Award, curated by Gigliola Foschi; an award that aims to promote research work in the field of photography as a language of contemporary art. The jury has already selected the winners, whose works will be displayed through a dedicated exhibition at the fair. Besides, one author among the finalists has been selected to exhibit at Ragusa Foto Festival and Phest, Monopoli’s international festival of photography and art.
One more prize is offered by the partner magazine Gente di Fotografia, who is going to dedicate a portfolio to one author among the finalists and another one will be able to participate to Return2Ithaca.
IRINOX SAVE THE FOOD award at MIA Fair
There is also the come-back, with its second edition, of the IRINOX SAVE THE FOOD award, curated by Claudio Composti, which intends to promote the mission and the values of the company of rapid blast chillers from Treviso. The IRINOX SAVE THE FOOD award aims to promote artists that, through the use of image have dealt with the theme of food, a theme that has always been present in human heritage, not only as a necessity, but also as a carrier of strong symbolisms and important socio-anthropological implications.
The fifteen works of the finalists are displayed in a common exhibition at MIA fair that will later be set in Parma, at Laboratorio Aperto del Complesso di San Paolo for Cibus Off, from the twenty-eighth of March to the tenth of April. One of the fifteen finalists will also get the Yeast award, in order to exhibit their works at the Yeast Photo Festival (Lecce) from September to November 2023.
The last year for Fabio Castelli, Founder and Director of MIA fair
MIA Fair 2023 marks the last year of Fabio Castelli as Director of the event. As Castelli stated, this is a decision that goes beyond his passion for photography, in fact, he will continue working towards that path. The ex-Director explains: «MIA fair is like a baby that I’ve created and now has to stand on its own feet». Gruppo di Fiere di Parma, which has been a partner for years, will from now on take the lead of the direction of MIA fair.
«The organizational machine of Fiere di Parma will dive deeper into MIA fair’s reality, realizing all the possible improvements in order to make it more interesting to the public’s eye and to evolve it on an international scale», says Castelli.
«These achievements can be accomplished thanks to the involvement of the city and its institutions. As a citizen, passionate about art, photography and his city, I wish that all the experience coming from MIA Fair could be used as an organizational mean for Milan, for what is going to be an evolution of a significant moment, in which something similar to what Milan is doing for museums and fashion will be done for photography».
MIA Fair
MIA Fair, conceived in 2011 by Fabio Castelli, is an art fair dedicated to photography that takes place in Milan, Italy. Every year, MIA Fair presents Solo Show and Group Show with a specific curatorial project, with the aim of emphasizing the transverse role that photography has come to play between the languages of expression of the contemporary art system.
MIA Fair provides a wide cultural program, with events and conferences dedicated to the world of art and photography, which aims to support conscious collectors with insights and guests in the Italian and international art scene. The 12th edition of MIA Fair will take place from the twenty-third to the twenty-sixth of March at SUPERSTUDIO MAXI, in Milan.
