2025
2nd Place recipient
Andrea Ferrero
My work is rooted in power games, playfully encouraging the reevaluation of symbols of domination embedded into built space. Appropriating motifs in architecture that perpetuate narratives of power and control, I craft exercises of collective imagination and fictions that weave historical facts with hearsay, political myth, personal stories, prophecies and possible futures. Examining food ceremonials as tools of power and spectacle, my work highlights how their theatrical displays of wealth mirror the monumental aspirations of architecture. My fantasies translate into immersive installations that subvert symbols of power and configure alternate histories, often juxtaposing industrial objects —like refrigerators— with ephemeral materials —such as chocolate, sugar and gelatin— drawing from archival material to meticulously carve and craft life-sized recreations of imagined ruins in edible forms. Inviting visitors to engage with the pieces through taste and touch, my work interlaces themes of consumption, decay, and spectacle. Transforming the monumental into consumable, it reactivates remnants of history through sensory interaction, offering sites of possibility and transformation. Seeking to trigger exercises of collective imagination,I play with provocation, deceit and displacement, deconstructing the value of an object to rebuild it in a different gaze, where a fragmented piece of architecture serves as a comforting reminder that most empires fall.
