Premio Combat Prize

In 2015 I started work on an ongoing project called “La 24 Ore” (literally “24 hours”). “La 24 Ore” is a leather briefcase designed to hold only a day’s essentials. To me it embodies the process of memory itself, its limitations and demands for selection and compression: a house must become a small, portable case; years passed within its walls must become only moments of inward reflection, representing stages in a journey of remembrance: preservation of memory, grief, and ultimately, personal transformation.
Each case is carefully and richly constructed and the aspect of the inescapable present, as well as the inescapable self within whom these memories are ultimately made, is echoed in each briefcase by the circular mirror to be found in the lid when it is opened, confronting the viewer with an image of him- or herself. ”La 24 Ore” embody to me those aspects of memory that must be creative, life-giving, and eternal.
Born in Milan, Kikki settled in New York City at the turn of the Millennium.
Kikki has worked and studied with numerous renown artists and institutions in New York City, including painter Larry Poons at the Art Students League, the ateliers of sculptor Garth Evans and painter Graham Nickson, while also forming nurturing relationships with Emily Mason and Albert Kresch (Hans Hoffman’s assistant)- two artists deeply rooted in the art worlds of prior generations. The Artist received a Bachelor in Fine Arts with high honors from Pratt Institute, where she also won the Speier Foundation Award in 2007. In addition, for two consecutive years Ghezzi received a fellowship to study at the Vermont Studio Center, and was an artist-in-residence at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland in June 2014 and 2015.
Kikki’s works have been exhibited in both the United States and Italy. Recent exhibitions include a collection of 5 paintings displayed at the Edward Hopper House in Nyack, New York (2015), and her solo show at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University (IFA 2015). Her works were also selected among the winners of the international call for artists, “Call for Bushwick 2015” and displayed at the related show in Bushwick, Brooklyn (2015) and published in ”Kikki Ghezzi/Roots” by Skira (2014). In 2016 she has been selected as one of the resident artists of the ”LTA program” at the Guggenheim museum in New York City.