ZEGNA Presents The 2025 Visible Situated Fellowships At Art Basel
Credit: courtesy of ZEGNA
Basel, June 16th, 2025 – On the occasion of Art Basel 2025, ZEGNA is proud to present the recipients of the VISIBLE Situated Fellowships: Shinan Imabo, located in the Cantagallo neighborhood of Lima, Peru, and Waral Prakalp, based in the village of Ganjad, Maharashtra, India. These two artistic collectives have been selected for their innovative, community-based approaches that draw inspiration from ancestral relationships with the forest as a living, regenerative force.
Both fellowships, curated by Judith Wielander and Matteo Lucchetti under the artistic direction of Michelangelo Pistoletto, Nobel Peace Prize candidate for his lifetime dedication to art as a catalyst for societal transformation, reflect a shared commitment to using art as a transformative tool for addressing today’s most pressing environmental and social challenges. Each recipient will receive a Visible Situated Fellowship from ZEGNA and benefit from the mentorship of the Visible project / Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto, allowing them to further develop their projects that explore and address climate crisis-related issues through art. This announcement takes place within the broader partnership between ZEGNA and Art Basel, established in 2024, which reaffirms the brand’s long-standing dedication to the arts. As Official Partner of the fair, ZEGNA continues to foster dialogue at the intersection of artistic practice, social engagement, and environmental responsibility.
Launched in 2010 by Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto and Fondazione Zegna, Visible is a pioneering platform that researches and supports socially engaged art in a translocal context. From 2011 to 2019, the Visible Award—Europe’s first prize for socially engaged art—was uniquely awarded through public juries hosted in city council chambers, in partnership with institutions such as Tate Liverpool and the Van Abbemuseum. These assemblies brought artists, curators, and citizens together to publicly debate the social impact of artistic practices, exploring the potential of art in shaping policies of care for the pressing issues of our time In 2022, Visible evolved into a series of Situated Fellowships, designed to offer deeper curatorial dialogue and long-term structural support to artist-led initiatives. This transition reflects a broader ambition: to rethink the role of philanthropy as an active force in shaping transformative cultural ecosystems. Since 2024, Visible has partnered with ZEGNA to launch a new cycle of research and support for socially engaged practices on a translocal scale.
“Both projects share millenary indigenous traditions of human coexistence and cohabitation with the forest ecosystem as both a natural and cultural space, in which their artistic practices find roots and nourishment. At a time in history when we are facing the climate crisis and its consequences, these communities act as a bridge for new generations to ancestral knowledge, which sees the forest as an archive of living knowledge,” share Judith Wielander and Matteo Lucchetti, curators of the Visible project.
The Visible Situated Fellowships’ environmental focus is deeply aligned with Oasi Zegna, the natural territory created by the founder over a century ago. Stretching across 100 km² in the Biella Alps, Oasi Zegna embodies ZEGNA’s ethos: a commitment to sustainability, cultural preservation, and harmony between humankind and nature.
To consolidate this shared vision on artistic practices that make a difference in society, Vincenzo De Bellis - Art Basel Director Fairs and Exhibition Platforms will join the VISIBLE Steering Committee.
“Fondazione Pistoletto Cittadellarte continues the research, experimentation, education, and advocacy work it began in the 1990s in Biella, Italy. Today, it has assumed international benchmark status as an institution born from art to bring the unlimited freedom and responsibility of creation to the most complex and urgent contemporary challenges. The Visible project platform - born as part of its UNIDEE University of Ideas educational program in the first decade of the 2000s - operates as an organ of the Cittadellarte constellation, interlaced with international networks in a galaxy of entities and communities of practice that are highly differentiated, but brought together by a commitment to responsibly transforming our ways of living on the Planet," declares Paolo Naldini, Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto Director.
NOTES TO EDITORS
Shinan Imabo (Our Inspirations) is a collective of over 35 Shipibo-Konibo women artisans, including embroiderers, painters, singers, and designers, based in Lima and Pucallpa, Peru. The collective emerged in 2021 as a response to the need to preserve and share Shipibo-Konibo artistic traditions, particularly the intricate geometric designs known as Kené. The Shipibo-Konibo, an Indigenous people from the Amazon region, have historically lived along the Ucayali River, maintaining cultural exchanges with neighboring groups and developing a profound knowledge of the relationships between human life, the Amazon forest, and spirituality.
Waral Prakalp is a community-led initiative focused on forest regeneration and ecological preservation in Devgaon-Ganjad, Maharashtra. Founded by a diverse group of farmers, artists, beekeepers, and shamans, the project aims to revitalize traditional practices of agroforestry, seed preservation, and sustainable land management. With a strong connection to Warli Adivasi traditions, Waral Prakalp views the forest as home and works to sustain its biodiversity through cultural and ecological stewardship. The initiative also actively supports women’s empowerment by promoting knowledge sharing in agriculture.
ABOUT ZEGNA:
The global leader in luxury menswear, ZEGNA, was founded in the Italian Alps more than a century ago, in 1910. Part of the Ermenegildo Zegna Group and still led by the Zegna family – now with a third generation overseeing the company – the brand remains true to the values of its visionary Founder, Ermenegildo Zegna, who believed in the virtues of creating world-class fabrics whose production is in harmony with both nature and local communities. This commitment to building a brighter future is embodied by Oasi Zegna, a preserved natural area that surrounds the company’s historic Ermenegildo Zegna Wool Mill. The inspiration behind the brand’s values, Oasi Zegna, continues to guide all that ZEGNA does; it also shapes the brand’s commitment to certifying Oasi Cashmere and Oasi Lino fibres as 100% traceable from 2024. ZEGNA’s rich heritage of innovation and craftsmanship is reflected in sophisticated collections that transcend trends and create a timeless take on luxury. Under Alessandro Sartori, who was appointed Artistic Director in 2016, ZEGNA’s identity follows a clear agenda: practicality and pragmatism put a progressive spin on tradition to meet the needs of the modern man, evolving the craft of tailoring towards the aesthetic of luxury leisurewear.
About Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto:
In a 19th and 20th century industrial complex, at the center of the Biellese wool district, still globally relevant for quality and excellence, Michelangelo Pistoletto has realized, starting in the ’90s and with the help of a group of researchers and experts, a collective laboratory: an organization which gathers not only artists, but also promoters of sustainability in the fashion world, social entrepreneurs who develop supply chains of ethical economy starting from the earth and agriculture, architects engaged in planning and building sustainable housing modules, and other brilliant operators engaged in every field in which human intelligence is called to interact with nature’s wisdom. In Cittadellarte the different fields of knowledge and activity connect to face jointly the great challenges of contemporaneity: the relationship between individual and society, between freedom and responsibility, between autonomy and belonging, between appropriation and sharing, the sustainability of the economic systems, the ethics of the ways of coexisting, the education and motivation to contribute to generate a change in every sector of life both in its individual and in its organized and collective dimension, from the deepest spheres like spirituality and politics to the most practical ones like economics, fashion, architecture, and food. For further information, please visit cittadellarte.it.
About Art Basel:
Founded in 1970 by gallerists from Basel, Art Basel today stages the world’s premier art shows for Modern and contemporary art, sited in Basel, Miami Beach, Hong Kong, Paris, and Qatar. Defined by its host city and region, each show is unique, which is reflected in its participating galleries, artworks presented, and the content of parallel programming produced in collaboration with local institutions for each edition. Art Basel’s engagement has expanded beyond art fairs through new digital platforms, including the Art Basel App and initiatives such as the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report, the Art Basel Shop, and the Art Basel Awards. For further information, please visit artbasel.com.
In the Philippines, Zegna is exclusively distributed by Stores Specialists, Inc., and is located at Greenbelt 3. Visit ssilife.com.ph or follow @ssilifeph on Instagram for more information.
About SSI Group, Inc.:
The SSI Group is the Philippines’ largest specialty retailer, with an established brand portfolio that includes some of the world’s most recognized international brands. We lead the country’s specialty retail market through the size and breadth of our brand portfolio and store network, with 94 brands and 593 stores. With our growing e-commerce presence, we are also the Philippine specialty retailer with the most diverse and extensive e-commerce offering. Our unique brand portfolio covers a wide range of specialty and lifestyle concepts, spanning the luxury, casual, and fast fashion, beauty, footwear, home, and restaurant categories. Established in the 1980s, SSI has been at the forefront of the Philippine retail industry for more than 30 years. Throughout this time, we have sought to inspire and enhance the lifestyle values of our customers and to cater to the evolving tastes and aspirations of Filipino consumers. In response to the evolution of the retail industry, the company introduced "The Specialist," an At Home concierge service dedicated to serving its valued customers with their shopping needs. Customers may get in touch with SSI’s Customer Service team through any of the following channels to inquire about a particular brand or product:
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