IT

The Venice-based curator reflects on curating as a practice of montage, active memory, and the construction of new forms of exhibition-making, moving between institutions and independent spaces.

French curator, researcher, and broadcaster, Julia Marchand moved to Venice in 2025. After working at the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles from 2015 to 2023, she left the institution to pursue an independent path already initiated in 2016 with Extramentale ‒ an “underground” curatorial platform through which, for ten years, she supported a generation of emerging artists while investigating marginality and adolescence as a cultural condition. Using spatial montage as a narrative device, her exhibitions construct visual constellations that escape conventional narratives based on historical and identity-based linearity. In this conversation, Marchand also reflects on the role of the curator today, the contemporary reversal of the “carnivalesque” as a political device, the concept of “active memory,” and the need to imagine new forms of exhibition-making.

In a lecture you gave at School for Curatorial Studies Venice, you said that one of the most important exhibitions of your career you worked as Associate Curator was Laura Owens & Vincent van Gogh, in 2021, curated by you, Bice Curiger and Mark Godfrey at the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles. What did you learn from that experience, and how significant was it for your professional development?
There is a common trope in curating with the duo-show that aims to measure the influence of an established or historical artist upon a younger one. Museum curators tend to look down at this model which seems to have empty itself of its narrative: Matisse & someone; Leonor Fini & someone, Paul Cézanne & someone else, and above all, Van Gogh. I do myself despise this model even though I did curate once a duo-show. With regards to your question: Laura Owens exhibition not only managed to dismantle any expectations one could associate with such exhibitions but also avoided its pitfalls. Her take was much broader than the sole influence of Van Gogh in her work since she inscribed her investigation into an economical axis: the economy of the image, its widespread circulation, and what it generates in terms of understanding of art, therefore in the exhibition itself. In short, we know Van Gogh before knowing him. We know the painting from the postcards before encountering the paintings. Laura Owens used other materials, other sources of images in the exhibition: the work of an unknown “craft” English artist from the XIX century (Winifred How). By doing so, we conceptually (and visually) re-equilibrate the understanding of Van Gogh’s oeuvre: through the lens of Laura Owens, looking at Winifred How, and relooking again at Van Gogh. It was about rebalancing the weight of our gaze between two opposite poles: on one side, the visually overfamiliar and culturally overexposed Van Gogh; on the other, the entirely unknown patterns of Winifred How. There is a wonderful essay by Mark Godfrey in the exhibition catalogue if you wish to explore further. To reply to your question, it taught me how to work with the legacy of historical artists in a more diffused and conceptual way. How to make a curatorial gesture that makes the coming together of artists more organic and clandestine approach. Duo-show or multilayered narrative are not only about outlining influences (it is even a bit dull to do so) but to expand the sensitive and conceptual scope in which you inscribed them. The Georgian pavilion I did shortly after is a direct response to this.

THE CURATORIAL PRACTICE ACCORDING TO JULIA MARCHAND

In Das Passagen-Werk, Walter Benjamin writes: “The method of this work: literary montage. I have nothing to say, only to show.” He described his method as one that disrupts historical and chronological linearity, recomposing it into visual, thematic, and conceptual constellations that evoke rather than explain. Do you see any resonance between this approach and your own curatorial practice? If so, could you give us some examples in exhibitions you have recently curated?
Totally. I would even say this is the accurate definition of how I curate! No wonder, then, that I did an exhibition with German filmmaker and poet Alexander Kluge, former (real) collaborator of Theodor Adorno and (desired) collaborator of Walter Benjamin as Kluge’s friendships with thinkers and writers expand the community of the living ones. I think Benjamin’s writings advocate an active remembrance without forcing it: a way of not forgetting, of sensing and remembering the presence of our past (and present) as something that emerges naturally, almost like a romantic encounter. Montage is not about juxtaposing elements; it is about how you juxtapose them to create the meaning of your own and slipping through the conventional narrative (and chronology). Montage is not only visual: it is a political act (used by artists and filmmaker such as Jean Luc Godard and Kluge). I am a woman and I am much younger than those folks so my take should be different, right? But I have been always skeptical about the oblivion in which we are plunged or about the pigeonholing of artists (I am not only talking about identity politics). By response to the oblivion: I curate exhibitions as a form of montage. The most striking ones are clearly my two last exhibitions I did on Iliazd (1894-1975), the Georgian editor and poet who lived in Tbilisi and Paris. In both of those exhibitions (Georgian Pavillion, 60th International Art Exhibition of Venice Biennale; Toutité at Fondazione Antonio Dalle Nogare, Bolzano) Iliazd materials are set in relations to the works of emerging artists. But none of those shows fall under the category of the duo show above mentioned. They are spatial montages acting upon a form that situates itself outside of curatorial hegemonic gestures. It is about trusting the materials and its reception by artists, then the visitors; it is about breaking the main narratives and to substitute it with a “feeling” which allows various entries point within the show. With regards the latter it was particularly striking with the Georgian Pavillion since the point of departure was a book on naked eye astronomy (Maximiliana ou l’Excercice Illégal de l’Astronomie, published in 1964). This sensual astronomy becomes the gesture of the exhibition as much as the idea of constellation as a prospective quest. The constellation put forth by Walter Benjamin was at stake too, but it was a silent pact I had with myself.  

In your curatorial research, the “carnivalesque” appears as a recurring theme. In a conversation with Morgan Labar (the Everythingism podcast, January 20, 2025), you describe it as a space of suspension and the subversion of social and political hierarchies. It was also central to the symposium you organized at the Centre Pompidou in 2020. It is even a key reference in the Venice Biennale In Minor Keys, curated by Koyo Kouoh. How do you think the “carnivalesque” can operate today in contemporary art not only as an imaginary or aesthetic, but as a curatorial device?
The symposium was made right before Covid. How ironic was that. I don’t think carnivalesque is the progressive and subversive figure anymore. I am going to be a bit naughty here but I would be more aligned with the ideas of Claire Tancons she delivered during my symposium about the carnivalesque as belonging to the conservatism scope. Look at Donald Trump: he is the new figure of the bouffon. Let’s look at Javier M from Argentina. Those forces have migrated over centuries and now are part of the institutions. Those the world in itself has been “carnivalesqued”. With regards to the Venice Biennale, I think the most carnivalesque “curatorial” gesture is the Trump-supported American artist Alma Allen signing a big contract with the French major gallery Perrotin. 

Do you believe in large-scale thematic or collective exhibitions? Can they still make sense in the contemporary art system, where there seem to be more biennials and triennials than artists? In this context, how do you imagine the role of the curator evolving in the coming years?
I don’t believe in them anymore but they still operate as a big carrot for many curators, including myself. The role of the curators has changed drastically the last few years. There are two sides of the coin: one could see we witness the “desertion” of our sector while one could testify of a “expansion” it is: how many of us have turned towards gardening, farming, laws, social work? I have been myself tired of making exhibitions that only circulate within our milieu. Today, the course of the world is deepening social inequalities, and this is massively reflected in the structure of the art world itself: on one side, the curators of major foundations who also circulate through the biennials, and on the other, those who continue to drift away from the artistic milieu. It is naive to think that the curatorial gesture is still made for art itself: it serves boards, patrons, and countless other parameters. And yet, it is within private foundations that we can witness some of the most radical artistic gestures. In Venice, for example, I am thinking of the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation.

Which themes do you think are urgent today, but still difficult to present within a museum or institutional framework?
Let me respond to this question by taking actions! But I can say one thing: I have a big problem with participatory art and workshops.

THE PROJECTS BY JULIA MARCHAND

Three years ago, you left the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles, where you had worked as a curator from 2015 to 2023, giving up the stability offered by a major institution. You now live in Venice and work as an independent curator ‒ a choice many colleagues would call “risky”. What motivated you to make such a radical change? 
My internal flame was off. You can’t be a curator without this little fire inside!

I have always found your ability to “inhabit the threshold” fascinating: you have worked in major institutions while simultaneously maintaining a more “underground” curatorial practice, out of the spotlight, particularly through your platform Extramentale (2016-2026) and your podcast Everythingism, through which you have supported and given visibility to many young and emerging artists. Does this stem from a personal necessity, a political choice, or both?
A vision, perhaps? A way to build it by embracing more the fragilities of the established one and the emerging voices. I am not surrounding to the language of fixed forms, I am truly doubtful about everything and I believe there is an artistic rigor at every levels. This is a matter of artistic ambition, not a politics or individual needs.

Speaking of Extramentale: this year you decided to conclude this curatorial project ‒ encompassing exhibitions, happenings, talks, and research ‒ which for ten years has explored contemporary art “through the prism of adolescence”. What prompted you to start this research? Perhaps, do you inhabit thresholds in the same way as adolescence?
Extramentale was born in 2016, so clearly it is reflecting what happened in the wake of the 2008 crisis and the 2010 sensibility: the birth and disillusion brought by the digital totality, the necessity to inhabit the periphery, the phenomenon of an adolescence as a cultural condition, the necessity of building a community that felt the same way. Also, no one really addressed it “back in the days” apart from the exhibition at CAPC of Bordeaux co-curated by Stephanie Moisdon. Extramentale was born in 2016, when I turned 30, it is ending in 2026, right before my 40^th birthday. It is time (culturally and individually) to enter into a form of adulthood. 

In 2026 Extramentale becomes a book (I Am The F****** Subject: Art and Adolescence, Lenz Press, March 2026) and enters an institution with an exhibition on adolescence at the National Gallery Zacheta in Warsaw (April 2026), which you co-curated with Joanna Kordjak and Katarzyna Kołodziej Podsiadło. What differences, limitations, and opportunities are you encountering in institutionalising exhibitions about adolescence? Is there a risk of stigmatisation that Extramentale has always avoided?
It is clearly a risk, but I feel this exhibition is very different from what I tried to not achieve with the book. Also, my co-curators and I have very different understanding of the subject and very different starting points: in that sense it is a very fruitful contrast. They involved teenagers in the curatorial endeavor whereas I stood “against” this idea for the reason you outlined above. But the outcome became very interesting like various modes of engaging visitors in an experience related to adolescence. As far as I am concerned, I considered adolescence as a condition, an experience, not an age group to involve in the making of an art piece (it can, of course, include them but in a more diffused, unexpected way).

As a perfectionist ‒ someone who literally rewrites the same text fifty times, as you told me once ‒ how do you relate to “error”? Has your relationship with it changed over the course of your career, or is it still evolving?
Ahahhaha it gives me back pain and I am still a perfectionist even at 40!! I am very hard to please, so I won’t give up on that with my work even it is involved suffering and not allowing errors. Perhaps I should be a bit more perfectionist with the men I chose, and less with the texts I write ;) 

Vittoria Morpurgo 

https://www.julia-marchand.com