Palazzo Mora and Palazzo Bembo, the main offices of the European Cultural Centre in Venice, have been housing Personal Structures, the 2022 edition of exhibition cycle Time Space Existence, until a few days ago. The sixth edition of the biennial modern art event saw the participation of almost 200 artists, with a strong female presence, from 51 countries. The art on exhibition was all about the concepts of reflection, in both its meanings: the physical phenomenon and the action of the mind. Over the last seven months, the ECC Italy team documented the exhibition with articles and interviews with the artists and with the public. Thanks to its international appeal and its use of digital assets, the exhibition was praised by the largest public from beginning to end, reaching a total of 578,200 visitors and 150,000 web views. On closing day, ECC Italy announced winners and special mentions for their self-produced award ceremony. Awardees have been picked by the curators, and as a prize, they will be given a work of art: 1 meter by Dutch artist René Rietmeyer, one of the promoters of Personal Structures and of the ECC. For category Painting and Mixed Media, the award was given to installation The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined, a submission of Galerie Myrtis. The piece is an inter-disciplinary presentation on a future centred on African art and on the ideology of Afro-futurism.

French sculptor and designer Jacque Jarrige, represented by Valerie Goodman Gallery in New York, won the category Sculpture and Installation with his elegant, precious research work on materials and shapes. His piece L’idolo, shown at Palazzo Mora, comes with a video that recollects the creative process behind the artwork. ECC Italy Photography Award has been assigned to Alissa Everett for the beauty and power of her stories in installation Covering Beauty, at Palazzo Bembo. Everett captured these stories as she was travelling in difficult regions of the world, which display her ability to document truth and give solid answers to our need for meaningful, sincere narratives. Helen Kirwan participated in Personal Structures with her project Grief-Work, a metaphorical journey into the themes of loss, memory, and temporality that took inspiration from grief practices in ancient Greece and Middle Eastern myth. Kirwan was awarded Video and Digital Art prize for her performance and her reflections on the collective cultural memory and the rituals, practices, and actions that model identity in any society. The lifetime achievement award has been given to Lawrence Weiner, an American conceptual artist. In his art, Weiner explores the meaning of language and the way it can be used to communicate in written form using English and foreign words. His art asks questions – and gives answers – on the concept of art itself. Lastly, the University of New Mexico and the Davidson College have been awarded for their project A Library, a Classroom, and the World and for their effort to involve the whole city of Venice, with all its culture, tradition, and territory, into these notions and in the field of ecology.