Francesco Arena

Francesco Arena is a contemporary artist born in Torre Santa Susanna, Italy, in 1978. He studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and currently lives and works in Cassano delle Murge, Italy. His artistic work focuses on history and the political and social events that have marked the recent past. Through synthetic and metaphorical forms in his sculptures, Arena seeks to breathe new life into episodes that are often hidden or silenced. His work proposes an approach to another way of thinking about temporality, allowing us to see irruptions in the course of things where only a line marked by cause and effect used to be. One of the most important aspects of his projects is the factual relationship with himself, using anthropometric data such as his weight, body mass, height, and the distance from the ground to his eyes as testimony to a quantifiable history. In this sense, the relationship between the individual and history becomes one of the crucial aspects of his work. In addition to his sculptures, Arena also works with installations and performances, exploring the limits of spaces and how they can be transformed by the intervention of art. He has exhibited in important museums and galleries around the world, including the MAXXI in Rome, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. In 2017, he received the VAF Foundation Contemporary Art Prize in Venice, Italy.