Eva Leitolf and Giulia Cordin’s project Violent Images selected as the recipient of the 27th RPS Grant

08/12/2026

©︎STUDIO IMAGE / Violent Images

We are pleased to announce that Eva Leitolf and Giulia Cordin, who collaborate as a team through Studio Image at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, have been selected as the 27th recipients of the RPS (Reminders Photography Stronghold) Grant for their project Violent Images.

The applications submitted for the March 2026 deadline were reviewed by Alexa Becker, Erik Vroons, Teun van der Heijden, and Andrei Polikanov, who selected Violent Images as the recipient of the 27th RPS Grant.

Violent Images investigates how images participate in the production, circulation, and interpretation of violence within contemporary visual culture. Rather than approaching photographs simply as representations of events, the project examines the social, political, and institutional conditions through which images are produced, distributed, consumed, and remembered. It asks how photography might address violence without reproducing the very mechanisms and conventions it seeks to critically examine.

A central concern of the project is the relationship between visibility and understanding. In a media environment saturated with images of war, displacement, catastrophe, and systemic violence, greater visibility does not necessarily produce greater knowledge or engagement. Repetition, decontextualization, and accelerated circulation can instead create distance, desensitization, or simplification. Violent Images considers how photography and its contextualization might create space for more critical and responsible ways of reading and engaging with images.

The project will now enter a period of further development through dialogue between Eva Leitolf, Giulia Cordin, and RPS. The exhibition venue, dates, selection of works, and spatial presentation have not yet been determined and will be developed through a series of discussions in the coming months.

We look forward to seeing how Violent Images will take shape within the specific context of RPS.

Please stay tuned for further developments.

RPS Grant Applications Open（Deadline: September 30, 2026）
https://reminders-project.org/en/grants/

©︎STUDIO IMAGE / Violent Images

©︎STUDIO IMAGE / Violent Images

©︎STUDIO IMAGE / Violent Images

©︎STUDIO IMAGE / Violent Images

©︎STUDIO IMAGE / Violent Images

©︎STUDIO IMAGE / Violent Images

©︎STUDIO IMAGE / Violent Images

©︎STUDIO IMAGE / Violent Images

©︎STUDIO IMAGE / Violent Images

©︎STUDIO IMAGE / Violent Images

©︎STUDIO IMAGE / Violent Images

STUDIO IMAGE
Studio Image serves as a space for reflection and experimentation within the Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts at the Faculty of Design and Art at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Eva Leitolf and Giulia Cordin collaborate as a team, bringing complementary and interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and research. Each semester, their work develops through research projects that critically examine image production and contextualization practices, with particular attention to contested social phenomena and the growing influence of images in public and political discourse.
In recent years, these teaching projects have developed into research initiatives, publications, and exhibitions. These include Landscape with(out) Locus (Nero Editions, 2023), developed in conjunction with the exhibition Reading Landscape? (Lumen Museum, 2023); the volume Violent Images (Nero Editions, 2025); the exhibition Diminishing Returns (FotoForum, Bolzano, 2024); and Reverse Gazes, which examines gender representation and associated stereotypes.

EVA LEITOLF
Eva Leitolf is an artist, educator, and curator. In 2019, she was appointed tenured Professor of Fine Arts and head of Studio Image at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. A critical examination of practices of image production and contextualization is a central thread throughout her work, which explores contested social phenomena including colonialism, racism, and migration.
Her work has been shown at international institutions including Savvy Contemporary in Berlin, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, KunstHausWien in Vienna, the National Gallery of Kosovo in Pristina, and the DePaul Art Museum at the University of Chicago.

GIULIA CORDIN
Giulia Cordin is a designer, educator, and researcher working at the intersection of graphic design and visual arts. Her practice is characterized by a critical, multidisciplinary, and practice-oriented approach, with particular attention to the politics of visual representation and practices of image contextualization across editorial projects, digital media, and exhibition contexts.
Since 2017, she has taught Visual Communication at Studio Image, Art Major, at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. She holds a practice-based PhD with distinction in Media Theories and Interface Cultures from the Kunstuniversität Linz in Austria. In 2015–2016, she was a designer-in-residence at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht.

IMAGE COURTESY OF STUDIO IMAGE

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