AMBASSADOR

The ambassadors of the Arte Laguna Prize are the representatives of the competition’s activities in various countries around the world. They collaborate as enthusiasts and art lovers, sensitive and attentive to cultural exchanges, to the dissemination of opportunities for artists in order to enhance art and international culture.

Alexandra Alexeeva is a contemporary metamodernist artist, digital photographer, and creator of socially significant cultural projects. She began actively developing her artistic practice in 2023, following years of individual study and exploration of visual language. She views art as a tool for strengthening the mind and spirit, embracing chaos as an essential part of the living creative process.

Alongside her personal artistic work, Alexandra leads several large-scale social initiatives. She is the founder of the international children’s contest “The Dream Car”, a project that is expanding into the concept of a future Museum of Children’s Imagination. She also initiated “Elevating Longevity” within the Moscow Longevity program — developing an idea dedicated to the population, that engage in creative practices aimed at supporting cognitive vitality. Her path is a continuous search for new forms where sincerity outweighs trends — and where art becomes a bridge between generations, nations, and cultures.

refinephotos.info@gmail.com | IG @0xalexeeva

Paal Anand is a visual storyteller and conceptual artist who is inspired by the fantastical and the surreal. Based in Culver City, California, he is a leading figure in the Light in Space movement, where light becomes a sculptural element that shapes perception and narrative.

Having worked on visual effects for major Hollywood productions including “Hellboy” and “Pirates of the Caribbean,” he transitioned his technical expertise and cinematic eye into creating museum-quality fine art that bridges classical narrative and cutting-edge digital technique. His work reimagines narratives through surrealist digital art and photography, creating otherworldly compositions that exist at the intersection of dream and reality.

His work has earned numerous accolades, including Graphis Gold Photography Awards and recognition as Artist of the Year 2025 by the Fondazione Effetto Arte. He was named as a Hall of Fame Inductee for the renowned Arte Laguna Prize and selected for the prestigious 2025 London Art Biennale. His innovative approach to lighting and composition has been praised for creating a theatricality and emotional intensity that draws viewers into realms where mythic grandeur and human vulnerability coexist.

As an ambassador, Paal hopes to bring his passion for fostering international artistic excellence and cultural exchange, helping to connect artists worldwide with opportunities to enhance their creative careers.

paal@paalanand.com | IG: @pa_fineart

Zeynep Cilek Cimen (1984, Ankara) conceives of art as a form of traditional dialogue — a way of engaging with inherited symbols and collective memory. Her work explores the myriad possibilities of shapes and forms, creating optical compositions that balance abstraction and repetition. Although her primary focus lies in the study of connections of forms, her art also draws upon the symbolic resonance of recurring motifs.

Her compositions, often guided by a subtle and rhythmic simplicity, place nomadic patterns at their centre. These motifs — sometimes singular, sometimes multiplied, intertwined, or distorted — generate new semantic connections. Through this visual interplay, they evolve into a formal language of cultural identity, one that reveals itself through layers of symbolism.
By weaving together elements from Anatolian, Seljuk, and broader Turkish traditions, the artist constructs a personal mythology within the vast landscape of cultural identities. In doing so, she transforms her message from the local to the universal — allowing her nomadic forms to speak a language that transcends borders while remaining deeply rooted in tradition.

fzcilek@gmail.com | IG: @zeynepcilekcimen

Diego Esquivel, aka [ctrl_v], is recognized for fusing art and technology to create immersive and interactive experiences that explore the intersection of the digital and physical worlds. His work has been exhibited internationally across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, including presentations at the Arte Laguna Prize 20th Anniversary in Shanghai (China), the National Museum of Costa Rica, the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Matadero Madrid, AA School of Architecture, the Metaverse Biennale (Dubai), and winning First Prize at the GlowFestival in Italy. His public-space interventions also include large-scale mappings in France, Japan, and Iceland, consolidating a strong international trajectory in new media art.

Alongside his artistic career, Esquivel serves as a Creative Technology Director within Publicis Groupe, where he brings extensive experience in digital production, creative technology leadership, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Working at the intersection of design, innovation, and emerging platforms, he bridges conceptual vision with advanced technical execution, leading complex, experimental projects across interactive media, technological, and commercial environments.

info@ctrlv-art.com | IG @ctrl_v.art

Francesca Furzi is an internationally recognized jewelry designer. In Milan, she works for Alfa Romeo; in Turin, she collaborates with leading companies such as Pininfarina, Bertone, and the Fiat Group, specializing in automotive design and Color & Trim, honing a design approach that combines art, technique, and the pursuit of formal essentiality.

Following her journey, she chose to create her own personal project, and thus the Francesca Furzi Jewellery brand was born, of which she is now the founder, president, and creative director. In 2013, she participated in the Salone del Mobile exhibition in Milan and was subsequently published in the book Artistar Jewels. Published in the UK in Smart Life and Lusso magazine. In 2018, the Francesca Furzi brand was awarded the Global Excellence Awards as Best Luxury Italian Jewelry Brand, strengthening its recognition in the international luxury scene.
Francesca currently lives in Shanghai, where she continues to develop her creative identity through an ongoing dialogue between cultures. As an ambassador for the Arte Laguna Prize, she offers her interdisciplinary vision—poised between art and design—to support new talents and promote the universal language that artists communicate through their works.

‎francescafurzi@me.com

Baiting Qi (亓百婷）is a Chinese artist based in the UK, working across narrative objects, sculptural installations, and expanded stage environments. Her works have been exhibited internationally at Tate Modern (London), the Royal College of Art (London), the Arsenale (Venice), The Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge), and the Phoenix Center (Beijing). She was a finalist in the 19th Arte Laguna Prize with her work Timefinder, exhibiting at the Arsenale in Venice, and later selected in its Shanghai exhibition at EKA Tianwu.

Her practice centres on planetary time, material memory, and nonlinear histories, developed within the context of the University of Oxford and supported by Linacre College and the Ruskin School of Art, often involving interdisciplinary collaborations across art, science, and cultural research. She holds an MA from the Royal College of Art and a BA from Renmin University of China. She was also featured in Sculpture magazine’s Artist Independent Column (Vol. 28, Issue 4).

Her ongoing projects explore global cultural narratives, cosmological imagination, and the nostalgia of historical objects in contemporary art. Active on the global art stage, she contributes to cross-cultural dialogue through artistic research, curatorial thinking, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

2283935401@qq.com | IG @qibai_700

Ana Maria Reque Sotelo is an architect, artist, and designer, trained in Peru and Italy. She completed studies and research at various architectural and artistic schools, and earned a Master’s Degree in Urban Planning from the IUAV University of Venice and a Master’s Degree in Visual Arts (Sculpture) from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice.

Her artistic research intertwines architecture, sculpture, ceramics, and design, with a deconstructivist approach inspired by the historic cities of Venice and Peru. She has participated in over 50 international exhibitions and four solo shows in Europe, America, and Asia, including EXPO Milan, Venice Design Week, and The Venice Glass Week. Some of her works are included in permanent collections of museums in Italy, Peru, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Argentina.

annamars.ar@gmail.com | IG: anamariarequeArt

Anna is an art manager, producer of international art projects, independent curator, and art business strategist. For 20 years she carries out different activities as a producer of cultural projects and curator of contemporary art exhibitions, in collaboration with embassies, institutional and independent spaces in Argentina, Lithuania, Spain, Sweden, Austria, Turkey, Finland, Italy, CIS, UAE, Egypt, Brazil, India, the USA, and Ecuador. As a director and producer, she made the international art expedition Antarctic Biennale. Anna believes art can be a unique language that unites countries, continents, cultures, and science. A wide network of partners all over the world and intensive experience in the cultural management field give her the possibility to realize complex projects in any place in the world. She regularly contributes writing to art and business magazines. As an art educator, she gives online and offline lectures and talks in Europe and the Americas. Her art research spans widely across contemporary art theory, a collaboration of art, science, business and new technologies, and focuses on the interaction of art and environmental humanities in the exceptional places on our planet. Anna is the founder and CEO of TAtchers’ Art Management and Art Ambassadors Association. She is teaching art business and international Art PR at several international universities. Anna has been presenting the Arte Laguna Prize for more than 10 years already.

annashvetsrosero@gmail.com | annashvets.art | tatchers.art | IG: @shvetsanna @tatchersartmanagement

Pascal Wild (Alexander Schrader) studied Communication Design in Mannheim and later developed his artistic practice outside formal art education, cultivating a distinct visual language that oscillates between innocence and excess, humour and melancholy. Working with oil, acrylic, spray paint, and pastel, he creates vivid, pop-inflected compositions populated by cartoon-like figures and oversized heads that recall the immediacy of children’s drawings. Beneath their playful facade lies a psychological depth touching on dependency, transience, intoxication, and existential emptiness.

Wild’s paintings navigate the intersection of Pop Art, Street Art, and archetypal symbolism, translating collective and personal narratives into a deliberately naïve yet emotionally charged aesthetic. Through colour and distortion, he explores the fragility, absurdity, and yearning that define the human condition.

Since 2021, Wild’s work has been exhibited internationally in Shanghai, Venice, Munich, Hamburg, and Berlin. His practice has been featured in Suboart Magazine, Zeitblatt Magazin, and Tagesspiegel. In 2023, he participated in a residency with Culterim and continues to expand his curatorial activities in Berlin.

hello@pascalwild.com | IG: @pascal_ _wild

Tim van den Oudenhoven is a photographic artist and founder and curator of ExtractArt, a multidisciplinary project involving pop-up exhibitions, book publishing, and online gallery activities.
As an artist, his works explore the limits of the photographic medium, using a variety of analog and digital techniques. His work focuses on the limitations of photography as a bearer of truth, and moves away from the medium’s purported adherence to objectivity. While the starting point is always photographic, the end result can explore various artistic fields, from sculpture to performance art.
In 2019, he founded ExtractArt, a platform combining book publishing with a pop-up gallery, presenting exhibitions in locations around Berlin as well as through participation in a number of art fairs around Germany. Rather than concentrating on a specific medium, ExtractArt’s focus is on offering a platform for talented emerging artists to show their work.
In the 11th edition of the Arte Laguna Prize, Tim won a Special Prize with a Residency at Fallani Venezia Serigraphy and he was also a finalist in the photography section of the 16th edition.

info@timvandenoudenhoven.com | www.timvandenoudenhoven.com | IG: @timvandenoudenhoven

Vladimir Paun Vrapciu | Ambassador 2025 Arte Laguna Prize

Artist and architect, with outstanding results in both creative fields, he is in the full rise of his artistic capacity. As an architect, his project representing a home for disadvantaged children was selected by the philanthropic foundation OAT FARM (Suceava) under the patronage of Prince Charles (King Charles), who chaired the evaluation committee. His architectural projects have been selected for various Annuals and Biennials in recent years (at the Romanian National Architecture Biennale 2018, 2021,2023; at the Architecture section of the International Biennale of Florence 2019). As a visual artist (having a diploma in Master of Arts at the University of Arts Bucharest), he has travelled an impressive path so far, making his way in the world of art galleries at home and abroad. Solo exhibitions: “Connection in Brahma” (organized in Buzău County Museum, in his hometown, in 2019, then at the Romanian Peasant Museum, Bucharest, 2019), “Space” (Buzău County Museum, 2021; Saphira & Ventura Gallery, New York, 2022; Romanian Peasant Museum, Bucharest, 2022), “How did I get here?” (Romanian Peasant Museum, Bucharest, 2020; Museum of Art – Targoviste, 2021; Brukenthal National Museum –Sibiu, 2022; Accademia di Romania, 2022; Romanian Embassy in Italy – ROME, 2022-present); participation in several renowned international exhibitions: Florence Biennale (2019,2021,2023,2025), Salerno Biennial of Contemporary Art (2020), Osten Biennial of Contemporary Drawing in Skopje, North Macedonia(2020,2022,2024 – where he was awarded the “Osten Prize” 2020,2022; “this prize has been awarded over the years to artists such as Pierre Soulanges, Henry Moore, Oskar Kokoschka”), the Florence Biennale of Art and Design (2021, where he was awarded “The Best Artist”, awarded in partnership with the World Association of Visual Arts), finalists of Arte Laguna Prize Venice Italy (2023, 2024). Artworks of Vladimir Paun Vrapciu in the following museums: Brukenthal National Museum – Sibiu, National Museum of the Romanian Peasant – Bucharest, Buzau County Museum, National Museum of Art of Moldova – Chisinau, Osten Museum in Skopje. Vladimir Păun-Vrapciu is a member of the Union of Visual Artists of Romania, the Romanian Order of Architects, the Romanian Union of Architects and the World Association of Visual Arts (WAVA-Art).

vladimir_paun@yahoo.com | IG: @vladimir_paun_76