Fadri Cadonau (*1996) was awarded the 2025 Art Prize of the Bündner Kunstverein. Part of the prize is the solo exhibition at the Art Museum Graubünden, where the artist takes the visitors on a journey of discovery.

Fadri Cadonau lives and works in Ilanz. His works, beyond their formal quality, always reveal content related anchor points that reflect their social issues.  

The present exhibition at the Labor of the Art Museum Graubünden is a walk-through spatial installation that begins with a tonal anticipation and leads to a sculptural installation. The experience of seeing and hearing culminates in a mutual dialogue, in which perception, medial reality and its enactment blend together. Thereby Cadonau connects to contemporary discussions on the extent to which different perceptions shape the social debates of our time: How do our ideas of truth come about? By what means can our imagination of it even be guided?

If the view is blocked by a white wall at the entrance, one is greeted by a soundtrack that arouses curiosity. A text immerses one in the history of a fictional mountain valley that is undergoing profound changes. In the installation in the main room, reminiscent of communally organised piping systems used to irrigate dry mountain meadows, Fadri Cadonau weaves a historical example with the present, creating a link between local observations and global developments.

With the Art Prize the Bündner Kunstverein pays tribute to Fadri Cadonau’s work, which is as passionate as it is poetic and that shows itself very openly and yet is always precisely formulated.