Màrcia Nemer
Artist in Residence, Ivan Juritz Prize

We are pleased to welcome Brazilian artist Màrcia Nemer to Spoleto as the 2025 awardee of the Ivan Juritz Prize in Text. Nemer currently lives in Stockholm where she is a doctoral student at the Stockholm University of Art (SKH) with her project ‘Staging Absence’. She is interested in exploring the possibilities relating to presence and absence in theatre, more specifically what happens to the work of the actor when we move it past representation.  In her practice, she enjoys creating friction between theatre, visual arts and performance (that often involves a surprising amount of paper, glue, paint and cardboard), as well as reflecting on reading and writing, memory and time.

Nemer writes: “My interest in the topic of absence first appeared during my MA at the Goethe Universität Frankfurt, when, reading Strindberg’s “Miss Julie”, I found herself intrigued by the figure of the Count, an absent character. In 2021,during the pandemic, while in Paris for a residency, I developed “walks in an absent city”, a series of guidebooks meant to be activated as they are walked by the reader. They were also an attempt to document the absence I found myself surrounded by at that point. I am very interested in the act of reading, which I think is one of the strangest things we humans do, but we don’t think about it. During the residency in Spoleto, I would like to look at my references and think about bibliography not as an academic requirement, but as place full of artistic potential.”

The Ivan Juritz Prize is hosted by King’s College London and in the spirit of modernism rewards creative works that explore modernist traditions in new and exciting ways across three categories: text, sound, and visual arts. It is open to students and graduates from arts and humanities courses at European further education institutions and includes a residency opportunity at the Mahler & LeWitt Studios and a cash prize. This year’s competition brought together a vibrant range of experimental voices from across Europe.