Events

Binta Diaw and Sara Ravelli are the winners of the 21st edition of the Premio New York. They will present their work to the public at the Italian Academy along with Valentina Furian, a Premio NY artist of 2024; Valentina's research project is supported by the Italian Council program (2025) promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

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Read more about the Premio New York, a prize program that has brought 50 artists to NYC over two decades.

Opening remarks
Barbara Faedda, Interim Director, Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, Columbia University
Claudio Pagliara, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in New York

Binta Diaw (Milan, 1995) is an Italian-Senegalese visual artist working on an international scale. Raised between Italy and Senegal, she studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and at the École d’Art et de Design in Grenoble. Her practice spans installation, sculpture, video, photography, and performance, weaving together languages and materials—soil, ropes, synthetic hair, plaster, or rolled-up flags—to create works that center on the viewer’s physical and sensory experience. Her research engages with themes such as migration, diasporic identity, belonging, and gender, while drawing on Afro-diasporic, intersectional, and feminist perspectives. Diaw’s work positions itself as a critical act against the dominant Eurocentric gaze, exploring the many layers of identity: her own, as a Black woman in a Europeanized context, and the collective one of a continent shaped by entangled histories, memories, and geographies in dialogue and conflict. Through her practice, she gives voice to marginalized narratives and fosters a more inclusive and plural understanding of the present. Her works have been exhibited in prominent institutions and biennials, including MAXXI, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Fondazione Trussardi, Museo Madre, Berlin Biennale, Liverpool Biennial, Gwangju Biennale, Castello di Rivoli, and Bamako Encounters.

Binta Diaw presents her current work. 

Valentina Furian is a visual artist working primarily with moving images and time-based installations. In 2025 she presented her work at Fantastica – Quadriennale di Roma, Lo Schermo dell’Arte (Florence), Triennale Milano and had a solo exhibition at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo / Guarene (YCRS). In 2024 she opened her first institutional solo exhibition at XNL Piacenza, participated in Biennale Gherdëina, and won the New York Prize (ISCP, New York). She has exhibited at MAXXI Rome, Gallerie d’Italia Turin, Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi Venice, and internationally at Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin and Pearl Art Museum Shanghai. Her works are held in collections including Castello di Rivoli, MAMbo Bologna, GAMeC Bergamo, and Triennale Milano. She is represented by UNA Gallery (Piacenza/Milan).

Valentina Furian presents Vanagloria (Seeing Double): Extinction, Replication, and the Illusion of Preservation, a research-based project that explores extinction as both a biological and cultural condition through the figures of cheetahs, twins, and museum dioramas. Using stereoscopy and immersive moving images, the work investigates how replication, preservation, and illusion shape our understanding of nature and disappearance. Vanagloria (Seeing Double) is granted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (14th edition, 2025), which promotes Italian contemporary art worldwide. The project began with a research phase in Paris focused on pre-cinematic devices and museum display strategies. It continues in New York in collaboration with the Cheetah Conservation Fund and selected city archives, investigating genetics, conservation, and stereoscopic vision. The research will continue in Buenos Aires with a public presentation in collaboration with Fundación Proa and Proa21.

Sara Ravelli is a visual artist working with sculpture, installation, and occasionally writing. Her practice focuses on how emotional conditions—particularly vulnerability, exposure, and affection—manifest within systems of power involving humans, other living beings, and objects. She is especially interested in how feelings emerge within social and domestic environments, and how they can be mobilized to question dynamics of control, authority, hierarchy, and care. 
During her residency in New York, she is investigating the relationship between form, mechanical movement, and emotional performativity. 
Her research explores metamorphosis—transformations between bodies, animals, and objects—as a strategy to construct and deconstruct identity, drawing on references from fiction, pop culture, and domestic horror. Material experimentation will expand to include glass, in collaboration with UrbanGlass, Brooklyn, exploiting its ambivalent nature—solid yet fragile, familiar yet destabilizing—to generate perceptual tension and multiple emotional readings. 
In 2026, she won the New York Prize and presented her work at the American Academy in Rome (IT) and Current Plans (HK). Other recent exhibitions include: Liste Art Fair Basel (CH); Dial Dialogue Dial, ONDO  (IT); OUCH!, BAR, (IT); Gonna Get You, Gonna Get You, BAR, (IT); Primary Domain, Ordet (IT); Palazzina#9, Palazzina (CH); Wie zu Hause, Wo ich nicht bin, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, (CH).

Sara Ravelli presents her current work. 

Artworks pictured: 
1. Valentina Furian, Notti bianche, 2025, installation view at XNL, courtesy of the artist 
2. Binta Diaw, Dïà s p o r a, 2021 - 2024, Photo © Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana Cecília Coca
3. Sara Ravelli, Allegro ma non troppo (the bell), 2023, courtesy of the artist and BAR. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano 

FUNDING AND SUPPORT

The Premio New York is promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture; by the Directorate-General for Public and Cultural Diplomacy of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation; by the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, and by the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies of Columbia University.

Valentina Furian's research-based project: The research project is granted by the Italian Council program (2025) promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.