Salvatore Vitale is the winner of the Bally Artist of the Year Award 2020. The Bally Foundation and the Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana (MASI) are marking the occasion with Displaying Security, the exhibition dedicated to him at Palazzo Reali, from 6 June to 18 July 2021.

Salvatore Vitale has won the Bally Artist of the Year Award 2020 as his work closely reflects the theme of the award’s 13th edition: “Sloganisme et sloganismes”, an invitation to develop languages capable of connecting form, image and content to create an eye-catching and thought-provoking interaction.

The solo exhibition will be held in the Sala Mattoni on the ground floor of Palazzo Reali and features a selection of photographs from the artist’s visual project entitled How to Secure a Country. This work spans several years, during which Vitale investigated the mechanisms underlying Switzerland’s national security system. It is a highly complex system made up of a series of extremely diverse but interconnected components – from the army to meteorological centres and even robotics laboratories – which frequently remain completely out of sight. Focusing on instructions, protocols, bureaucracies and other more concrete aspects of security, the challenge embraced by Vitale was to reveal certain facets of a very intricate and difficult-to-observe structure through a series of photographs, diagrams and graphic illustrations. This was no easy feat, as reflected by the title of the exhibition: Displaying Security.