While the Premio Cairo 2025 continues its commitment to the environment by calculating and offsetting the event's emissions, a bread sculpture takes home the win.
They are sculptures, though perhaps that word does not quite do them justice: they are forms depicting bodies, which Maria Giovanna Zanella built and assembled from bread, and which have won the Premio Cairo 2025. Bread that she kneaded and baked herself, in a kiln she built specifically to create her work: Buoni. "I'm a painter, but last winter I no longer felt like painting — instead I was seized by a desire to be in the kitchen, to enjoy the warmth while I stayed there making bread." The artist describes the genesis of her work this way, having deliberately chosen not to protect it from its inevitable decay: "It's a miracle it's still standing. Especially because I had to make it three months ago to be ready in time for the prize. I decided, however, not to put anything on it to preserve it — so sooner or later it will die, like all of us. When you think about it, working against nature and the total deterioration of things is a titanic undertaking. I was actually surprised — they were courageous to accept into the competition a work that will inevitably be destroyed."
Zanella's entire body of work revolves around the concept of acceptance, starting with the subject she chose to portray. "The question of the body has always been central and significant to me from the very beginning of my artistic career: I remember a precise moment when, browsing idly on PornHub, I ended up on an XXL channel and reflected on the fact that I found it all extremely romantic. For me it is crucial to reflect on the theme of accepting the monstrousness we all carry inside us and all the ways in which we can exist in the world. It is very interesting to reject dogmatism and political correctness in our society: that is why I use bread, which is a perishable material in constant transformation. It is the antithesis of fascism. If we want to put it in some context, we live in a time of contradiction, where the opposition of positions is constantly exploited. That is why I titled the work Buoni: because I believe that the way we exploit the infinite possibilities of the human being is one of the great ills of our society, which is then amplified to extremes by social networks. Let us return to sex, love and bread, which are simple things."
On stage at this twenty-fourth edition of the Premio Cairo to announce the winner was the president and founder of the prize in 2000, Urbano Cairo, alongside the editor of the magazine Arte Michele Buonomo, and the president of the Museo della Permanente Emanuele Fiano, who played host by recalling how the exhibition space was the first to open in Milan, in 1886. "For the ability to restore us to the essentials of life, with simple material and a light touch": with these words Urbano Cairo presented the 24th Premio Cairo to Maria Giovanna Zanella, while also congratulating all the participants and the editorial team of the magazine Arte who selected them, because never before this year had he been so impressed by the works in the competition. "I found them truly beautiful and united, despite their very different disciplinary characteristics, by a sense of the time in which we live," Cairo explained.
As for the sculpting technique, it is nothing more than a mixture of water and flour shaped into form: "I found myself in August building a kiln with an angle grinder in the Tuscan countryside because I had made bread works before, but never this large — all of this is part of my concept of flexibility. The beauty of it, in fact, is that you don't know what the finished work will look like, because the cracks that form during baking are unpredictable," Zanella explained.
For the fourth consecutive year, and thanks to the collaboration with LifeGate, the event's media partner, and its consultancy service with Climate Action, the emissions produced during the opening evening on 13 October were calculated, reduced and appropriately offset through the purchase of carbon credits certified to the VCS standard. This commitment supports projects that contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the protection of the climate and environment. A cultural event such as the Premio Cairo 2025 produces CO₂e from energy consumption and installations, the mobility of artists and guests, catering and refreshments, and waste management. Since it is not always possible to pre-emptively reduce all emissions, the unavoidable ones were offset through participation in one of the Verra-certified projects, which generates renewable solar energy, helping to reduce CO₂ emissions and promote energy sustainability.
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