The initiative extends the long-term collaboration between Visible and Zegna, supporting artist-led ecological and community-based practices through sustained curatorial and structural frameworks
Zegna announced the 2026 Visible Situated Fellowship during Art Basel, extending its ongoing partnership with the Visible platform developed by Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto and Fondazione Zegna. The fellowship continues the initiative’s focus on supporting socially engaged artistic practices working at the intersection of ecology, community, and long-term systemic change.
Since its founding in 2010, Visible has evolved from an open research and development platform into a structured framework for sustained artistic support. Initiated through Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto and UNIDEE University of Ideas, and curated by Judith Wielander, Matteo Lucchetti, and Carolina Lio, the programme has consistently focused on practices that extend beyond representation and operate directly within real-world contexts.
Between 2011 and 2019, Visible was known for the Visible Award, which recognised socially engaged artistic practices through public juries held in civic and institutional settings. Since 2022, the initiative has shifted toward Situated Fellowships designed to provide longer-term curatorial, financial, and infrastructural support for artist-led projects embedded in specific communities. The partnership with Zegna, established in 2024, marked a further consolidation of this model, with a focus on ecological urgency and climate-related research aligned with the principles of Oasi Zegna, the 100 km² natural territory in the Biella Alps developed by founder Ermenegildo Zegna.
The 2026 fellowship has been awarded to GOODLand, an artistic and community platform founded in 2020 by artist Martha Atienza on Bantayan Island in the Visayas, Philippines. Nominated by Visible catalyst Zoe Butt, GOODLand operates through a model of collective care that integrates ecological protection, cultural resilience, and community self-sufficiency, developed in close collaboration with local fisherpeople, farmers, and institutions.
The platform’s work focuses on coastal and marine ecosystems, with particular attention to the seabed as a fragile underwater environment requiring urgent protection. Through educational programmes, participatory initiatives, and responses to ocean plastic pollution, GOODLand addresses the environmental pressures facing the Philippine archipelago, one of the regions most exposed to climate instability and extreme weather events.
The fellowship will support the expansion of ongoing initiatives, including the distribution of rechargeable flashlight systems designed to reduce pollution associated with compressor diving, alongside coordinated coastal and underwater clean-up programmes. Atienza’s artistic practice operates in parallel to these efforts, using video and participatory methodologies to document and engage with the ecological and social conditions of the region.
The Visible programme sits within Zegna’s broader cultural strategy through ZEGNART, which consolidates the brand’s art and cultural initiatives across long-term institutional partnerships. The initiative reflects a continued emphasis on art as an active framework for responsibility and transformation rather than representation alone.
In this context, Visible positions artistic practice as an ongoing structure of support embedded in real environments, extending its focus on sustainability, ecological systems, and collective agency across both cultural and geographic contexts.