Under the guidance of a mentor, the selected students will embark on a six-month course to deepen their knowledge of their research topic, followed by a four-week residency in Rome, where they will further develop their artistic vision and perspectives through a series of specialised projects. The theme of the year led under the mentorship of media artist Miklós Erhardt DLA is 'From Talking Statues to Street Art’ and explores public space in Rome as a medium, focusing on the relationship between street art and the city’s cultural heritage. 

The first scholarship recipients of the Rome Student Residency Programme were Fülöp Benjamin Bechtold, Sára Holczer, Csongor Boldizsár Nagy, Eszter Tóth, Szonja Urbán, and Aranka Adelina Vass, who took part in professional preparation sessions and field research at the Rome Hungarian Academy during their four-week stay in July. Building on the inspiration gained in Rome, they have continued developing their scholarship projects for an additional six months upon returning home. The final outcomes of their creative research will be showcased in exhibitions at both the Falconieri Palace gallery of the Rome Academy and MOME. 

Each of the six residents explored informal, non-canonised aesthetic phenomena within urban space, working across different media and methodologies. Benjamin Fülöp Bechtold documented names and markings scratched into Rome’s walls, preserving them as clay imprints, investigating the relationship between urban memory and anonymity. Sára Holczer’s film project, working title Catalogus rerum, brings together personal stories and projected desires linked to the San Michele a Ripa complex, through the personal myths people create around the site. In his project Tickets, please, Boldizsár Csongor Nagy catalogued and organised Rome’s so-called “talking graffiti”, laying the groundwork for an interactive installation and an online archive built around a ticket machine interface. In her project, working title Crocheted graffiti, Eszter Tóth translated the typography of Roman street inscriptions into textile graffiti. By creating her own tags in yarn, she brought street art into dialogue with craft traditions. In MOTHER, Szonja Urbán mapped the word across the city during an almost 200-kilometre walk. Using the slant of the letters to structure her route, she also built an archive of graffiti encountered along the way. In Signal Synaesthesia, Adelina Aranka Vass translated Rome’s electromagnetic interference into perceptible form, uncovering hidden technological layers within the city’s infrastructure. 

This year’s call for applications, open until 6 March, asks how we look at a city as culturally complex as Rome, how we relate to the apparent permanence of its built environment, and the continuous historical changes that keep reshaping it. The focus is on public spaces and green areas that have developed organically, shaped by everyday use rather than formal planning. They make it possible to explore alternative patterns of urban use, including perspectives that are not exclusively centred on human needs. Each selected student will receive a scholarship of HUF 750,000. During the four-week residency, they will stay at the Rome Hungarian Academy in the Falconieri Palace. The exhibition of the newly developed works will also be held there in the gallery. 

Developed in collaboration with the Collegium Hungaricum Rome, the programme aspires to revive the prestige of Rome’s artistic scholarships within the Hungarian art and creative scene. 

Full call for applications: https://api.mome.hu/uploads/RSRP_Palyazati_felhivas_a6c0e045b1.pdf 

Application form: 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc1ccragJ2O-SHaUwAJs_4c1cvvxwhR1ydDdG_NvWmLK8DCPA/viewform 

Call for application, application, and other information are available HERE.