Carolina Ricca Lee

Caroline Ricca Lee wins the second edition of the ISOLA SICILIA 2023 award, presented in Turin, a collaboration between Artissima, Italy's leading contemporary art fair, and the Oelle Mediterraneo Antico ETS Foundation of Aci Castello (Catania).

Artissima 2023

Artissima is the leading international Italian contemporary art fair: a privileged observatory of the best research in the visual arts and a major cultural event, capable of attracting the interest of the general public and the press.

The ISOLA SICILIA project is an experiential format dedicated to the navigating artists of the third millennium, designed to enhance contemporary artistic research in the visual arts, photography, video, sound art, and more: actions conceived as cultural journeys in Sicily.

The Oelle Foundation promoted, for the second year, the ISOLA SICILIA Award, which saw the selection, by an international jury, of an artist from among those represented by the fair's galleries. The winning artist had the opportunity to experience a RESIDENCE in Aci Castello, in the province of Catania, during which he or she deepened his research on the concept "Sicily, Island among Islands."

At the end of the residency, an exhibition of the material produced during the residency was held at Artissima 2024.

The award was conferred by an international jury composed of Antonia Alampi (director, Spore Initiative, Berlin), Caterina Riva (director, MACTE, Termoli), and Andrea Bellini (director, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva), with the following motivation: "Caroline Ricca Lee's practice, which ranges from sculpture to performance and installation, is based on research that focuses on the multifaceted identity in the post-colonial era. Born and resident in Brazil, the artist of Chinese-Japanese origin creates evocative narratives by combining assemblages, costumes and collages, everyday elements, symbolic and natural objects, archive photos and ceramic casts. The narrative interweaving of each work, with which Caroline Ricca Lee builds a bridge between the ancestral past and the contemporary, reality and fiction, gives life to an intimate portrait of the artist that is at the same time open to embracing the collective and community dimension. The jury believes that a residency in Sicily can be a stimulus for Lee's research both Both in terms of materials and techniques and of stories, in a connection with the Sicilian context, a historic crossroads of identities, histories, and cultures.

"For us at the Oelle Foundation," says President Ornella Laneri, "after just six years of work, it is a significant achievement to consolidate our ties and synergies with Italy's most important contemporary art fair. Thanks to our "ISOLA SICILIA" award, awarded to Caroline Ricca Lee, the projects we as a Foundation will develop with them will allow us to bring a different perspective to the region to interpret our contemporary world, understanding both its dramas and its boundless beauty; its power and its fragilities, in a context like Sicily, a land historically devoted to inclusion, which also means rewriting the imagination of our time."