ROME.- Chiara Bersani, Adji Dieye and Margherita Moscardini are the artists featured in the MAXXI BVLGARI PRIZE exhibition, a project bringing together MAXXI and Fondazione Bvlgari to support art and the production of new works.

For the first time in the history of the Prize, now in its fifth edition, all three finalists are women.

Curated by Giulia Ferracci, the exhibition opens to the public on 6 November 2026 and presents three new works, produced for the Prize, that offer significant insights into our times.

Chiara Bersani gives to the question of whose lives matter the form of a sarcophagus and a ritual; Adji Dieye inverts the tower of a pavilion from the 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition, revealing how that gaze continues to shape the present; Margherita Moscardini takes a bronze section of pavement as the starting point for a legislative proposal on the commons.

On 23 February 2027, at a dedicated ceremony, the jury will announce the winner, whose work will be acquired by the Museum and become part of the MAXXI Collection.

Maria Emanuela Bruni, President of Fondazione MAXXI: “The MAXXI BVLGARI PRIZE is one of the most significant initiatives for the promotion of contemporary art in Italy: it supports artists’ development and offers them a space in which to express their ability to question the present.

For the first time this year, all three finalists are women. Far from being a mere coincidence, the selection of works by Chiara Bersani, Adji Dieye and Margherita Moscardini reflects MAXXI’s ability to identify and champion some of the most significant talents on Italy’s creative scene, in which women play an increasingly central and decisive role.”

Jean-Christophe Babin, President of Fondazione Bvlgari: “Together with MAXXI, we are proud to renew our commitment to contemporary creativity and to the talents who are helping redefine its languages and perspectives. The MAXXI BVLGARI PRIZE fully embodies Fondazione Bvlgari’s vision: supporting artistic research, giving a platform to new voices and transforming ideas into works capable of inspiring dialogue, emotion and change. The remarkable practices of Chiara Bersani, Adji Dieye and Margherita Moscardini demonstrate the power of art to challenge our understanding of the present and envision new possibilities for the future. We are delighted to support these artists in bringing new works to life and, through this partnership, to contribute to the growth of the MAXXI Collection and the enrichment of contemporary artistic heritage.”

The exhibition opens with Adji Dieye’s large-scale installation Una Resa senza Caduta, a structure of iron tubing wrapped in sheer rayon fabric. The installation recreates, upside down and precariously balanced, the outline of the tower of the French West Africa pavilion at the 1931 Paris International Colonial Exhibition, an architectural structure designed to offer European audiences an image of Africa tailored to the empire. By inverting a building conceived to showcase the colonies, Dieye reveals how the images established at that time continue to shape the way we see today.

With Una strada, Margherita Moscardini brings sculpture and law together. A bronze sculpture reproduces a section of the pavement on Via Guido Reni, the street on which MAXXI stands, and is displayed vertically alongside its rubber and plaster mould. The project draws on a category of Roman law described in Justinian’s Institutes: res nullius in bonis, things that form part of no one’s patrimony. Together with philosopher Michele Spanò and legal scholars Alessandra Donati and Francesco Follieri, the artist has developed a proposed amendment to Italy’s Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape that would establish assets that cannot be appropriated or alienated and are intended for collective use. The work would serve as a test case: if it wins the Prize, the sculpture is intended to replace the original paving. Beginning with a work of art, this reflection on the common good thus extends to civic life as a whole.

In the adjoining gallery, Blanche. Si fece un giaciglio nel mio udito by Chiara Bersani is a small wooden box covered in stucco and plaster, joined to a playable lyre. Its starting point is an Egyptian mummy held at the British Museum that shows signs of osteogenesis imperfecta, the same condition with which the artist lives. Bersani transforms this into a sarcophagus and a ritual, periodically activating the work through her voice and the lyre, with a song offered as a gift to all those living bodies that go unrecognised in civil society.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Dario Cimorelli Editore, edited by Giulia Ferracci, with texts by Jean-Christophe Babin, Maria Emanuela Bruni, Frida Carazzato, Emanuele Guidi, Adam Kleinman, Michela Maffongelli, Marta Papini, Beatrix Ruf and Francesco Stocchi.

Chiara Bersani (San Rocco al Porto, Lodi, 1984) is a performer, choreographer and visual artist working across the performing arts, experimental theatre and contemporary dance. Her practice develops from the concept of the Political Body and the specific characteristics of her own body, understood as an expressive and poetic instrument. Bersani challenges stereotypical representations of disability and approaches embodiment as a form of resistance and community building. The jury selected her for the transformative power of a practice in which the body becomes a voice and a political subject, recognising Gentle Unicorn as an emblematic example of the body as an anarchic device capable of subverting the norms of control and aesthetic discipline.

Adji Dieye (Milan, 1991) is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works between Milan and Dakar. Her research explores the relationship between images, identity and power in the contemporary world. By analysing advertising imagery, architecture and national archives, beginning with those of Senegal, she examines the visual forms through which a community asserts its self-determination. Photography is central to her work: Dieye uses it as a critical tool, extending it into installation, sculpture and video to question how the European gaze has constructed the image of Africa. The jury highlighted the artist’s ability to move between documentary and invention, bringing renewed attention to memories, silences and events excluded from historical narratives.

Margherita Moscardini (Livorno, 1981) investigates processes of urban, social and natural transformation in different territories. Through engagement with the law, her multidimensional works imagine different ways of inhabiting places. Her practice spans architecture, the city and citizenship, generating sculptures conceived as objects and spaces that can be used and inhabited, with legal statuses that challenge ownership and the sovereignty of the state in which they are located. The jury recognised the rigour with which her work brings theory and form together, and its ability to question space in its urban, architectural and social dimensions.