Virginia Zanetti

Virginia Zanetti (Fiesole, 1981) is an artist and professor of artistic anatomy and video installation at the Fine Arts Academies of Florence and Catania. She graduated in Painting with honours from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, and specialises in art education.
In her research, the Other, as opposed to the Self, provides the starting point for exploring ideas about separation and disharmony, with the aim of making it possible to recognise the bond with the community to which one belongs, and the surrounding environment. Action and performance are a fundamental part of Zanetti’s practice, and she uses them in striving to bring out the essence of community and that which is “essential” in the human being, adopting the critical potential of the crisis as a stimulus for a continuous rethinking of reality. Each of her actions is aimed at bringing out a revitalised sense of existence and a new emotional awareness, through relational dynamics and shared codes, in an attempt to make the work of art become an integral part of the environment and community for which it is conceived.
Zanetti’s work and writings can be found in publications such as A Cielo Aperto edited by Bianco Valente and Pasquale Campanella, postmediabooks, 2016, and Breve storia della curatela by Hans Ulrich Obrist, postmediabooks, 2008, as well as in specialised magazines such as Artribune, Espoarte, Exibart, Flash Art or newspapers such as La Lettura del Corriere della Sera or La Repubblica.
Zanetti is the co-founder of Estuario project space in Prato and of Laboratorio del Futuro, a discussion platform where intellectuals from various cultural areas meet and debate the main issues of their time together with citizens.
She works in unconventional venues as well as in Italian and foreign institutions for culture and contemporary art such as the MAN in Nuoro, the CCC Strozzina in Florence, the CAC Pecci in Prato, the Mac in Lissone, the Kunsthalle in Berne (CH), and the Italian Cultural Institute in New Delhi (IND) and Zurich (CH).
She has won awards such as MIBACT’s Movin’up Prize 2015 and the International Competition for artists to create permanent artworks for the Palazzo di Giustizia in Florence in 2017, the Primo Premio Maccaferri for photography, Arte Fiera, Smartup Optima 2019, Naples and Level 0, ArtVerona 2020 and 2021.
Her works are in public collections such as the Museo MADRE in Naples, the Museo MAMBO in Bologna and the Museo MAN in Nuoro.