Kunstgespräch mit Fadri Cadonau

Fadri Cadonau (*1996) has been awarded the 2025 Art Prize of the Bündner Kunstverein. In the associated solo exhibition at the Bündner Kunstmuseum, the artist takes visitors on a journey of experience.

Fadri Cadonau lives and works in Ilanz. Beyond their formal qualities, his works always reveal thematic anchor points that reflect social issues. In the 2024 annual exhibition, he examined the filigree system of the big city and convinced the jury of the art prize: A house, built with the simplest of means, houses a video work in which the artist can be seen building a house made of red-and-white striped construction barriers in the middle of a street intersection in Buenos Aires. The temporary construction became a small refuge in the middle of the pulsating life of the big city, where living space is a rare commodity. At the same time, it was an obstacle for the busy road traffic, which had to be accepted as part of the architectural requirements and had to be circumvented.

The current exhibition in the laboratory of the Bündner Kunstmuseum is a walk-in spatial staging that begins with a sonic premonition and culminates in a sculptural installation. The experience of seeing and hearing enter into a reciprocal dialogue in which perception, media reality and its staging are intermingled. In doing so, Cadonau ties in with current discussions on the extent to which different perceptions shape social debates of our time: How do our ideas of truth come about? By what means can our idea of it even be steered? What are the reasons for these discrepancies?

The art prize of the Bündner Kunstverein honors Fadri Cadonau's committed and poetic work, which is very open and yet always precisely formulated.