Alice Longo

• How to preserve an artist’s legacy: Antonio Frugis talks about the Pino Pascali Foundation

  IT

  For more than twenty years, Antonio Frugis has been dedicated to studying and promoting the work of Pino Pascali. This interview explores the work of the Foundation, based in Polignano a Mare, focusing on an artist who, sixty years after his death, continues to defy definition and challenge the present.

  In Puglia, in Polignano a Mare, the Pino Pascali Foundation has overlooked the Adriatic coast since 2010, paying homage to and keeping alive the memory of the eponymous artist. Pino Pascali (Bari, 1935 – Rome, 1968) crossed the contemporary art scene of the 1960s like a meteor, establishing himself in a very short time as one of the most important exponents of Italian creativity in the world, and distinguishing himself for his eclecticism and for a practice that does not remain confined to a precise historical placement but is current and projected towards the future. An attitude that makes Pascali’s production always deserving of study and a source of inspiration.  In this article, we have analyzed the work of the Foundation; its role in the relationship with international institutions and curators who investigate Pascali’s work; we have deepened some theoretical and practical implications of managing his legacy and we have dwelt on the meaning and implications of a curatorial research that develops over time around the figure of a single artist, exploring how this type of continuity can translate into new perspectives of research, interpretation and valorization of his work and his territory. We talked about it with a prominent figure: Antonio Frugis – Senior Curator and General Coordinator of the Foundation –, who for more than twenty years has dedicated his career to the accurate study of Pino Pascali’s work.

  

  THE INTERVIEW WITH ANTONIO FRUGIS

  How do you curate and protect the legacy of an artist who passed away so prematurely in an ethical and scientific manner?
  Study certainly remains the first fundamental step to effectively govern Pascali’s legacy, because without a profound understanding of the artist it would be unthinkable to activate the useful devices to protect his identity and, therefore, his legacy. Pino Pascali, although he operated for such a short time, remains (and will remain) one of the fundamental paradigms in Art History, his eclecticism undoubtedly offers many points of reflection that one must know how to grasp in their true context. Personally, I have never felt the urgency to channel research on the artist by perimetering it within institutional boundaries; every researcher and scholar must be able to feel free to conduct research and study following the models they deem most appropriate and, in this sense, taking care of Pino Pascali’s artistic legacy means providing the best tools for understanding the Archives, the documents and that know-how that is acquired after many years of study and daily attendance with these materials. It also remains essential to engage with scholars and researchers who, from the 1960s to the present day, have been studying Pascali’s work from both a historical and a critical perspective; research, study and publications remain essential because they often reveal unprecedented points of view or add subtleties deserving of further depth declined with respect to one’s own background. Finally, in the question there is already the best possible answer: without ethics and intellectual honesty, the risk is that of making understanding border into an arbitrary truth which, undoubtedly, I personally do not feel I possess.

  CURATING PINO PASCALI’S LEGACY

  Managing Pino Pascali’s legacy means confronting ephemeral, industrial materials and a multidisciplinary practice that ranges from sculpture to performance. What are the most complex challenges you encounter in the conservation, authentication and cataloguing of this heritage?
  One must well understand the spirit of the time in which Pascali operates: a world, the Western one, which in those 1960s was changing at great speed and technological progress was seen as the further liberation and emancipation of man, while the economy began to assume the forms of voracious capitalism. There is a society charmed by the new, but there is also a part of it that would like to overcome the alienation that the new generates. Pascali used both waste materials that he collected from Roman second-hand dealers and new, industrial materials: steel wool, acrylic plush and even fibre cement; materials that one should have a thorough understanding of (e.g. European steel wool differs from the American variety used by Pascali) but which time and numerous exhibitions have worn away, posing questions regarding restoration and, in some cases, have led to an overproduction of exhibition copies of the work. Cataloguing is made easier by the fact that we are familiar with all of Pascali’s sculptures and their locations (only a few have been completely lost to history); their authenticity is guaranteed by the historical records compiled by each institution and gallery owner.

  THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITMENT OF THE FOUNDATION

  In addition to the precious work of conservation and protection of the archive, the Foundation is committed to the promotion of major exhibitions dedicated to Pino Pascali. How is the work articulated that guarantees the presence of the artist in international museums, ensuring that his practice does not remain tied exclusively to the narrative of the Italian context of the 1960s?
  Almost without exception, anyone organising a solo exhibition or an event at which Pascali is likely to consult the Foundation, and this gives us great satisfaction, given the considerable efforts made, which lend the institution a sense of authority. Pascali remains inextricably linked to the vibrant atmosphere of the 1960s, and yet his work seems as though it could have been created tomorrow, for it retains a dawn-like freshness that transcends time; the artist was capable of creating formal statutes through archetypal models that border physical geography and belong to the hidden Self. This is one of the key aspects, as this interpretation denies any physical location in space-time, extending Pascali’s artistic practice along the line of infinity; Pino Pascali worked in the 1960s, turning his gaze towards an archaic and ancestral past, embracing the present whilst constantly projecting his work into the future.

  

  The Foundation still administers the Pino Pascali Prize, established in 1969. Originally created as a commemorative initiative and closely linked to the artist’s circle, the Prize has evolved over time to become an international award that brings world-renowned artists to Polignano. In light of this transformation, what strategic role does the Prize play today, both for the Foundation and for the artists who take part in it?
  The relationship between the award-winning artists and the Prize itself is a two-way one, especially now that its track record has been firmly established; every award-winning artist is familiar with Pino Pascali before entering the Foundation’s galleries. Yet coming into contact with the very essence of the places associated with Pascali evokes sensations that the artists perceive. The prize is not awarded to a mere follower of Pascali but to those capable of following in the methodological footsteps of the linguistic research carried out by Pino. The exhibition celebrating, as is traditional, the winning artist thus becomes the vehicle for turning our gaze towards those artists who engage in a silent yet powerful dialogue, capable of triggering a rupture in artistic languages to the point of overturning them entirely. And it responds perfectly to what Pascali himself wrote, because even the Prize that bears his name is like a snake that sheds its skin every year.

  

  ANTONIO FRUGIS’S CURATORIAL RESEARCH

  Yours is an exceptional curatorial career: for more than twenty years, your research has been linked to a specific venue and has consistently focused on the work of a single artist who is no longer with us, whose creative career was meteoric, spanning just four or five years. How does this specific form of curatorship manifest itself in day-to-day practice? And how do you manage to continually draw new inspiration from a body of work that is inevitably limited and already historicised?
  My work with the Foundation has now reached its twenty-first year – wow! I think I’ve been very lucky to have met, throughout my professional career, the right people who, as well as placing their trust in me, have above all helped me to grow, to challenge myself and to mature (I hope!). Study is always the winning formula, but it must be complemented by a deeper understanding: studying Pascali requires knowledge and a thorough understanding of many aspects of art history, but also of television, theatre, sociology, anthropology and all those worlds the artist frequented and, above all, lived in. I enjoy exploring everything and, to be honest, I owe my thirst for knowledge largely to the role I try to play to the best of my ability. Take, for example, Pascali’s graphic work, particularly his advertising and television pieces: to understand Algida’s rejection of the ‘I Killers’ advert, one needs to know what the written and moral rules were of a television that, in its early days, felt the need to educate Italians and which, thanks to this, provided, for the first time, a unique audio-visual language for the whole of Italy. Similarly, it becomes difficult to understand some of the artist’s technical and stylistic choices unless one examines in depth his work as a set designer at RAI alongside Cesarini da Senigallia, the set designer for television. It is therefore necessary to use a magnifying glass and delve into minutiae which will often yield very few results but which, at the same time, allow us to uncover revealing details that time may have scattered or erased. Pascali moves within boundaries that are fluid yet extensive; the risk is that we may lose sight of the horizon, and our task is to serve as the star chart to guide the artist’s journey.

  

  Art history has cemented Pascali’s place within the Arte Povera canon, thereby risking oversimplifying his extraordinary multidisciplinary complexity. The exhibition Pascali Memoria. Notes in Images, on display at the Teatro Kursaal Santalucia in Bari until 25 October 2026, shines a spotlight on his 1965 photographic series commissioned by Cirio for an advertising campaign. What are the ‘blind spots’ or the less-explored aspects of Pascali’s work that you believe it is urgent for critics to focus on today?
  Pascali was an artist who, right from the start of his career, attracted the attention of art historians and critics who recognised the value of his work; his work was never seen as something for the future but was already considered contemporary. Those who have followed his dazzling rise have clearly explained his place in art history, setting out certain aspects from the outset and dispelling the notion that Pascali can be pigeonholed into a particular school or movement, because the artist himself is movement. Critics will always find new inspiration to explore every aspect of the work of this extraordinary artist; I believe, if anything, that today it would be important to address certain issues, such as the conservation of the work, improving its upkeep and thereby avoiding the production of exhibition copies, as I mentioned earlier; one could discuss exhibition solutions, since the concepts of ‘total width’ and ‘scenic space’, which envisage ways of occupying space starting from the surface, from the floor, and which so greatly influence the experience of the works, remain fundamental to fully understanding the meaning of Pascali’s work; yet I also fully understand the ‘rules’ imposed by museum practice. It really strikes me as an interesting topic.

  THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE FOUNDATION AND THE LOCAL AREA

  The Foundation’s institutional history is inextricably linked with the processes of urban regeneration in the local area: its first premises in Polignano a Mare ‒ at the time not yet a Foundation but a museum ‒ were a former hospital; its current premises are housed in a former abattoir; and the exhibition in Bari is held at the Teatro Kursaal, which has reopened following extensive restoration. How does the Foundation ensure that the regeneration of these historic and industrial spaces translates into a driving force for genuine political and social transformation for the region and the people of Puglia, as well as for tourists and professionals in the field?
  Over the years, we have been able to collaborate with various organisations and we are grateful for all the opportunities we have had to bring the experience of contemporary art to Puglia, raising awareness not only of Pascali’s work but also of the Foundation’s activities. Having access to and working in such prestigious, albeit unusual, spaces is a significant challenge, and so the use of a theatre such as the Kursaal highlights the multidisciplinary nature of the arts and a mutual exchange of influences; in this way, spaces are returned to the public, becoming not merely places to gather but genuine centres of cultural exchange, so that the debate is not the exclusive preserve of professionals but can include everyone. This is how a cultural venue becomes a catalyst for thought and a defining feature of a community; but it is a lengthy process that cannot be dispensed with.

  

  During his lifetime, Pascali spent only his childhood and part of his adolescence in Puglia, leaving at an early age to pursue his studies, first in Naples and then in Rome, which were then the centres of contemporary art. For Pascali, Puglia existed more as a realm of myth and nostalgia, as a reservoir of the imagination, but not as a market or an exhibition space. From a curatorial perspective, how does the Foundation – now based in his parents’ hometown, a place particularly dear to the artist – avoid the risk of ‘folklorising’ or regionalising his work, whilst keeping intact the tension between his roots and his global reception?
  For Pascali, Puglia was naturally a source of anthropological inspiration, myth and myth-making, not a place to be staged but one that was already inhabited, where nature and the natural held an almost primitive significance; today, that archaic tension has almost completely faded, and tourism has taken hold to the point of affecting not only the Mediterranean spirit but also the landscape itself. Perhaps, in this sense, it is once again Pino Pascali himself who helps us, enabling us to understand how we must not renounce our roots whilst, at the same time, moving forward; it is essential to find that balance. Polignano is now a significant and important destination that attracts tourists from all over the world; many of them choose to visit it precisely because of the Foundation’s presence: this is due to the iconic status that Pascali represents, but also to the work carried out precisely because it was decided not to confine Pino to his Mediterranean but to leave him free to swim, to follow the currents – a modern-day Ulysses returning to his Ithaca but who, during his journey, has scaled the highest peaks of art.

  Alice Longo

  La Fondazione Pino Pascali

  
  23 July ‒ 25 October 2026
  PASCALI MEMORIA. Appunti per Immagini
  Teatro Kursaal Santalucia, Bari

  The text has been translated in English using AI

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  by

  Alice Longo

  October 15 · 26

• Slavs and Tatars, the collective that challenges Western models

  IT

  From the written word to the exhibition format, from myth to technology, Slavs and Tatars have developed a practice that spans the geographies of Eurasia to question Western models of knowledge, representation, and belonging, and to imagine art as a space in which cultural distance doesn’t necessarily need to be bridged.

  Slavs and Tatars is a collective that dedicates its research and creative work to a specific geographic area: Eurasia, stretching from the former Berlin Wall to the Great Wall of China. The collective describes the people and cultures of this region by rejecting Western categorizations, as they flatten and diminish the irreducible plurality of languages, alphabets, religions, and myths that characterize it. Its practice is structured around three activities: the publication of books, exhibitions, and lecture-performances. In 2020, Slavs and Tatars founded the Pickle Bar in Berlin, a nonprofit space that hosts residency and mentorship programs for professionals from their region, a place where the sharing of food and fermented beverages fosters political discussion, activism, and contemporary art.
  In this interview, we explored some central themes of their practice: the relationship between the page and the space, multilingualism and untranslatability, the crisis of the Eurocentric display, the role of the sacred and myth, the political function of humor, manual labor and craftsmanship, and the transformations brought about by artificial intelligence.

  

  THE INTERVIEW WITH SLAVS AND TATARS 

  Slavs and Tatars were originally founded in 2006 as a reading group and editorial collective, before transitioning into a visual, installation, and performative practice. How does this genesis, rooted in the written word and translation, shape your approach to conceiving the exhibition space? Do you conceive the exhibition display as an extension of the printed page, or rather as its deconstruction? 
  We have long been interested in the notion of collective reading (in so far as reading has been a collective, performative, oral activity for the overwhelming majority of its duration. The idea of intimate, individual, private reading is perhaps 2-3 centuries old if that). In the first 2-3 years of Slavs and Tatars’ activities, our practice consisted solely of two dimensions: be they pamphlets, books, or posters. But inevitably, something to be read. As our work became more capacious formally, if not discursively, the exhibition making ‒ whether space-making, sculptures, or installations ‒ started to dis-articulate the very propos that the books (or later, the lecture-performances) sought to articulate.

  Your visual works are often not mere images, but the three-dimensional materialization of rhetorical figures ‒ such as metaphors, allegories, and phonetic shifts ‒ that inherently belong to the realm of philology and literature. In a sense, it seems you do not ask the viewer to simply “look” at your exhibitions, but to “read” them and perform an exegesis. From a curatorial perspective, how do you navigate this transition from the textual to the three-dimensional? 
  The geographic remit of S&T could be seen as a foil of sorts. Of course we are deeply interested in and invested in the region. However, the epistemological or heuristic challenges underlying our regional focus include an emphasis on other types of knowledge, beyond the analytical. To address these other orders of knowledge ‒ the affective, the phenomenological, the metaphysical, the digestive, et al ‒ we felt it necessary to move beyond the written page.  

  

  SLAVS AND TATARS’ PRACTICE

  Your mapping of Eurasia brings into dialogue distant geographies and historical legacies ‒ such as the Poland-Iran axis or the routes connecting the Caucasus to Central Asia. This approach appears driven neither by a search for universal archetypes nor by a nostalgic revival of the Soviet rhetoric of the “friendship of Nations”, but by a radical critique of the Western geopolitical and philosophical model. While European states built their modernity and geopolitical stability on the violence of homogenization and the sharp separation of borders and identities, Eurasia has remained an intrinsically complex, porous, and stratified region. From your perspective, how has this resistance to homogenization shaped Eurasian artistic languages, and how does your practice draw from it to disrupt the Eurocentric display? 
  We’re not qualified to speak about artistic languages of Eurasia as we are not art historians. Nor do we aim to represent the region in any shape or form. We are more familiar with the linguistic, historical, or religious specificities of the region. Over two decades of practice, we’ve perhaps used the term decolonization once. Why? Because we’ve consistently prioritized the act of decentering historical narratives in our own research; re-directing resources to others (via our residency and mentorship program); providing a platform for other artists, writers, et al via Pickle Bar, rather than engage in polemcis surrounding these topics. In an era of collapse much like the one in which we find ourselves, we prefer to build and support institutions rather than bring them down.  
  As you know, museums are facing a perfect storm of dwindling audience numbers (many have not reached pre-Covid levels 6 years later), reduced public funding, and a generational rift whereby the children of erstwhile cultural patrons are not as keen as their parents to take the mantle of supporting the arts. Our work cannot speak to the latter two challenges but the first it can and does. Which is one reason for the incredible support we’ve had from institutions over the years: while the traditional demographic (bourgeois, Christian, European heritage) of Western institutions has been dwindling for some time, there are multiple, other publics often overlooked. Our work privileges these Others if you will simply by replacing the art historical and cultural assumptions conventionally found in cultural spaces with the stories, rituals (the samovar), symbols (the Simurgh), furniture (River bed), et al from our region. Only then do we move forward with more demanding, conceptual work about language politics, the risks of excessive secular rage, etc.      

  Much of your work aims to dismantle the dualisms typical of Western Cartesian thought. To achieve this, you frequently invoke the “metaphysical split” and the use of humor (as embodied by the figure of Molla Nasreddin). In an art world that often aspires to be global and accessible, your work seems to reclaim the right to opacity, accepting that certain references or linguistic plays may not be immediately shareable. If a work of art forgoes full transparency, what responsibility does it then assume toward the audience? What does it mean for you to communicate without necessarily making everything comprehensible? 
  We often return to the distinction Siah Armajani made in an interview with the late Calvin Tomkins in a 1993 New Yorker interview between the accessible and the available. Like Armajani, we aim to make our work as available as possible. For example, we dedicate considerable thought to the mediation of an art work alongside if not prior to its conception. However, accessibility depends on how much you invest, to borrow the language of the asset class. The more you put in, the more you get out.
  Let’s talk the example of multilingualism in our work. For the 58^th Venice Biennale, in the Central Pavilion we exhibited a series of 15 vacuum formed panels (in a clear nod to Broodthaers) called Tranny Tease (pour Marcel), each featuring a text written in an alphabet not suited to it. There were some 8-9 languages (Georgian, Russian, German, Boxori, Arabic) and 4-5 alphabets (Cyrillic, Latin, Arabic, Uighur, Hebrew). Both sides of the argument could be made: on one hand, the proliferation of languages and alphabets is an earnest attempt to make the work more available (not to mention beyond the Anglophone world); on the other, the decision not to include any English text betrays that very intention.

  Do you believe art should reduce the distance between cultures or, conversely, teach us to inhabit that distance without pretending to fully bridge it? 
  The latter. As you can imagine, Emily Apter and Barbara Cassin’s work on this topic – that of untranslatabilty – resonates greatly with us. 

  

  MYTH, FAITH AND INSTITUTIONS
  
  In your work, the sacred, mysticism, and religion do not appear as remnants of the past, but as living apparatuses of cultural production. In an art system that remains deeply secularized, what does it mean to restore epistemological dignity to these forms of knowledge without turning them into mere aesthetics? 
  If art has any pretense left to be political, it must acknowledge the significant role faith has played in the upheavals and civil disobedience movements of the last century: from the Baptism of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement in the US to Mahatma Gandhi’s Hinduism in the Indian Independence Movement to Islam in the Iranian Revolution to the role of the Catholic Church as arbiter during Poland’s Solidarnosc. 

  In your exhibition and curatorial project Handdschob at the Kunstmuseen Krefeld, opening on 4 October 2026, you dialogue with the historical avant-garde of Die Brücke, placing craft, manual labor, and its social, folkloric, and even sexual implications at the center. Why has it become urgent today for a collective with such a markedly conceptual and editorial approach to interrogate craftsmanship and manual practice? 
  At risking of being blunt, to counter the excessively sentimental ideas and people surrounding crafts in recent years. The title of the exhibition, “Handdschob”, is a deliberate play on the German word for craft or skilled trade, “Handwerk” (for further reading on the unwieldy transliteration of [dz] in German as ‘dsch’ see “Deepthroat Dipthongs,” in Slavs and Tatars, Wripped Scripped (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2018). More than merely a skill in making things by hand, “Handwerk” represents a pillar of the German economy, a deeply regulated professional sector, and a recognized social class. What our exhibition, and its rather sultry title, offer is an opportunity to excavate the mess, the grit, and the grind behind often idealized notions of craftsmanship.  

  

  THE TIME OF RESEARCH ACCORDING TO SLAVS AND TATARS

  In your series of works Hang Don’t Cut, you embedded “captcha” codes within the biological veins of melons, juxtaposing bot-tracking technology with the Eurasian legend that sees the rind of this fruit as a form of divine, ciphered writing. While the Large Language Models (LLMs) underpinning AI digest, translate, and standardize global language based on statistical probability, your practice celebrates phonetic error, intuition, mysticism, and the “productive misunderstanding”. What do you see as the greatest risks and dangers of this technological turn, and in which specific realms ‒ cultural, linguistic, cognitive, or political ‒ do you believe these threats are manifesting most alarmingly?
  Perhaps we’re not as alarmed as we should be, or as many of our colleagues are. We’ve tried over the last two decades to take the long view – never addressing frontally the issues of our day. So it follows that we remain to be convinced that artificial intelligence will change the nature of those things art has been tasked to reveal ‒ the wondrous, the numinous, the holy – when as of 2026 automatic soap dispensers still cannot detect the skin of darker-skinned people.

  In your work, you use the concept of fermentation as a process of transformation where decomposition does not equate to loss, but rather becomes an opportunity for preservation and the generation of new forms. This idea also seems to reflect your way of working through long-term research cycles. Can we consider fermentation a methodology of your practice? How does this approach influence the development of your research and artistic production?
  Yes, we often speak about yoghurt when discussing our methodology. To make yoghurt, one needs yoghurt. There’s definitely an element of totum simul, the whole is in the parts and the part in the whole. Is transliteration the content of our work or its modus operandi or both? What these research cycles allow, however, is a type of knowledge production against the increased acceleration of our times and our industry. 

  Your most recent work cycle, Simurgh Self-Help, draws inspiration from The Conference of the Birds, the famous Persian mystical poem in which thirty birds embark on a spiritual journey through seven valleys to find the Simurgh, ultimately discovering that the king they sought resides within themselves. In your exhibition at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, you used this allegorical framework to reorganize and reinterpret your entire body of previous work. What did you discover about your own practice by adopting the Simurgh as a lens through which to observe your past?
  It’s too early to say. Can we get back to you in a decade with this question?

  Alice Longo

  Slav and Tatars website
  Slav and Tatars instagram
  Pickle Bar website
  Pickle Bar instagram

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  by

  Alice Longo

  August 27 · 26

• Beyond the white cube: context as a perceptive device

  IT

  For a long time, the white cube has been considered the ideal space for contemporary art: neutral, silent, isolated from the world. Decades later, this exhibition system not only appears outdated, but has been called into question by a radical evidence: there is no aesthetic experience that is not situated, corporeal, influenced by its historical and cultural context.

  The white cube is an exhibition model that became established after World War II, characterized by white walls and uniform lighting, designed to present the work as autonomous and timeless. Research in the field of neuroaesthetics — in the wake of the discipline pioneered by neurobiologist Semir Zeki — has shown that aesthetic judgment is not formed in a pure mental space, but emerges from the interaction between environment, body, cognitive expectations, memories, and reminiscences. Recent studies show that the exhibition context significantly influences the perception and evaluation of a work, modifying neurophysiological parameters such as brain activity, heart rate, and eye movements. In other words, what we see is never truly separable from where we see it. BrainSigns — a spin-off of La Sapienza University in Rome since 2010 — uses neuroscience to analyze brain and physiological signals, producing value in the field of neuroaesthetics. Neuroaesthetic experiments are usually conducted in unconventional exhibition contexts. Research has shown, for example, that identical works can be evaluated significantly differently depending on where they are presented or the preliminary information provided to visitors. Among these, the attribution of authorship plays a meaningful role: it has emerged that prior knowledge of authorship — whether human or artificial intelligence — has a decisive influence on the final aesthetic judgment.

  NEW CURATORIAL PRACTICES

  In light of these facts, the abandonment of exhibition practices that reproduced the white cube and the preference for historically connoted places, hybrid environments, and temporary architectures cannot be dismissed as a curatorial trend. Rather, it is an attempt to rethink the aesthetic experience as an embodied experience, as suggested by Vittorio Gallese and David Freedberg, respectively leading figures in research on mirror neurons and in the theorization of embodied simulation applied to art. In these spaces, the context is not a neutral backdrop, but an active variable that dialogues with the work and the viewer. Brian O’Doherty spoke of the white cube as the dwelling place of the Eye, yet the viewer is not just a gaze, but a body sensitive to different types of stimuli, not only visual, traversed by automatic reactions, cognitive biases, and emotional responses that precede any conscious interpretation. Ignoring this dimension means continuing to design exhibitions for a subject that does not exist. In this scenario, curators are called upon to take responsibility: to recognize that every exhibition choice creates a set of conditions that guide perception, attention, and judgment. Being a curator, then, means being a designer of the artistic experience for viewers-interlocutors.

  THE MEDIATING ROLE OF THE ART CURATOR

  Studies on interaction with space include the analysis of relationships between multiple actors, and research has yielded results that herald changes both in the way art is produced and in the way it is presented to the public: on the one hand, artists are involved, moving from studio or laboratory production to on-site production; on the other hand, users are involved as a fundamental subject in the triangular relationship with the work and the artist. Space is therefore the container in which this relationship takes place. Over time, the role of the curator in the art world has taken on particular importance precisely because of their role as mediators: a bridge between the creative process of artists and the experiential needs of visitors to an exhibition, museum, or any environment where it is possible to enjoy an artistic experience. One exhibition that changed the way we think about art, how it is presented, and the role of those who organize it is Live in Your Head. When Attitudes Become Form, curated by Harald Szeemann in 1969 at the Kunsthalle in Bern, a neutral modernist space that Szeemann used as a testing ground, encouraging artists to produce works directly on site, making the environment part of the exhibition itself. That space influenced the artists and the works produced; if the exhibition had been organized in another environment, the works and the final result would have changed. The idea that art is not only the finished work but the entire process was therefore explored, in which the curator takes on a creative role in relation to the artist.

  HOW TO RECONFIGURE THE SPACE OF AN EXHIBITION

  Rethinking exhibition spaces today, not only for contemporary art but also for the rearrangement of museum collections, means designing perceptive environments, not simple containers. Taking into account the five senses, not just sight, means, for example, working with light as a variable and non-uniform material, capable of generating areas of attention and pause; with sound, constructing acoustic landscapes that guide the movement of the body in space; with touch, through materials, surfaces, and temperatures that make the space experienceable even beyond vision and also erase that feeling of distance that overwhelms the visitor; on smell, often overlooked but a powerful activator of memory and emotional states; and finally on the temporal rhythm of the visit, which involves the internal sense of the body and duration, helping to combat the so-called “museum fatigue,” when the attention span drops dramatically between the beginning and end of the visit. From this perspective, setting up an exhibition means calibrating, creating conditions in which the work can resonate with a situated body, restoring the aesthetic experience to its sensory and cognitive complexity.
  Contexts “speak”, adding a discourse to the work, sometimes completing its meaning, other times being the source of inspiration for its very genesis. Art always happens in relation to a place, a body, a situation. Perhaps it is not a question of abandoning the white cube totally or forever, but of ceasing to believe it is neutral.

  Alice Longo

  

  The text has been translated using AI

  by

  Alice Longo

  January 29 · 26

• Museums, curatorship, and territory: the interview with Lorenzo Balbi

  IT

  2026 will be the last year of Lorenzo Balbi’s second term as director of MAMbo ‒ Museo d’Arte Moderna in Bologna. In this interview, we focused on the main stages of his tenure, from institutional experimentation to the socio-political urgencies that are currently affecting the art system.

  The artistic and cultural offering is a fundamental component of Bologna’s distinctive character, both nationally and internationally. For nine years, Lorenzo Balbi (Turin, 1982) has been Head of the Modern and Contemporary Art Area of the Civic Museums Sector of the Municipality of Bologna, which includes MAMbo, Museo Morandi, Casa Morandi, Villa delle Rose, Museo per la Memoria di Ustica, and Residenza per artisti Sandra Natali. We retraced some of the decisive stages of his career with him, reflecting on the responsibilities of the contemporary museum and the challenges facing those working in the cultural field today.

  

  THE INTERVIEW WITH LORENZO BALBI

  Since 2017, you have been Head of the Modern and Contemporary Art Area of the Bologna Civic Museums Sector and artistic director of MAMbo – Museum of Modern Art in Bologna. Since 2018, you have also been the artistic director of ART CITY BOLOGNA, and in 2020 you taught at the AMaC (Arts, Museology, and Curatorship) master’s program at DAMS. Since 2021, you have been teaching Tools and Skills for Artistic Practice at the Academy of Fine Arts. Bologna seems to be not only the location of your work, but also an active partner in your projects. What does this city represent for you?
  For me, Bologna is much more than a place of work: it is a living interlocutor, a context that stimulates and guides every design choice. I think that the role of the artistic director of a public museum goes far beyond the management of an exhibition space. It means being part of a community, intercepting its demands, catalyzing energies, becoming a sensitive antenna for the territory. Bologna, with its cultural history, its institutions, and its civic dimension, has allowed me to understand the museum as a porous organism, capable of continuously dialoguing with the city and seeking to restore its complexity and vitality.

  In an interview with ProfessioneARTE, regarding the role of the contemporary museum director, you said that today it is important to be an aggregator of multiple demands. In your experience, which collaboration — with an artist, a community, or an archive — has been particularly significant?
  Of all the experiences I have been fortunate enough to develop, that of the Nuovo Forno del Pane has been the most radical. During the pandemic, we redefined the museum as a center of production and a place for community, offering artists a space to work, meet, and rebuild a critical mass together. The legacy of that project continued with the Outdoor edition, in which the museum became the activator of a network of artistic production centers spread throughout the territory. It was concrete proof that a public museum can transform its identity and role in response to the real needs of the historical moment.

  

  MEMORIES, ARCHIVES, AND CRITICAL PRACTICES IN THE PRESENT

  The Project Room is an exhibition space within MAMbo which, under your direction, has taken on a specific function, welcoming research, local memory, archives, emerging artists, and little-known historical figures. What role does it play in relation to the museum’s general programming?
  Of all the experiences curated at MAMbo over the past nine years, the Project Room is the one I am most proud of. I wanted to dedicate a space — taken from the permanent collection — to historical and archival research on Bologna and Emilia-Romagna. The goal was to offer the public, almost 60% of whom are international visitors, a glimpse into the stories, places, events, and people that have shaped the collective consciousness of the region. At first, it wasn’t clear to everyone what we wanted to do: I received many proposals for solo exhibitions from local artists. But the consistency and continuity of the programming made the direction clear. Today, many people identify with that space, finding fragments of their own experiences there, while those who weren’t there can come into contact with a tradition that gives meaning to our contemporary museum choices.

  Among the programmatic points of your second term at MAMbo, you mentioned decolonization. What do you think is the best way to act radically in this regard?
  I believe that a museum can act in a decolonial sense not by hiding objects, but by activating them to generate new meanings. The exhibition The Floating Collection, which I co-curated with Caterina Molteni, was born precisely from this principle. We invited international artists to build a “floating” collection based on their direct experience with the city’s collections. This approach does not rewrite history, but rather places it in tension with the present, creating plural and shared narratives.

  FUTURE CHALLENGES ACCORDING TO LORENZO BALBI

  Your work can be described as a device that intertwines works and context, institutions and communities, artists and cities, capable of capturing needs and directions. If you had to point out a socio-political urgency that museums must address in the coming years, what would it be?
  In recent years, we have been confronted with fundamental issues: gender, provenance, religion, decolonization, sustainability, post-digital, artificial intelligence. I believe that the new urgency concerns access to the artistic professions. Today, becoming an artist or curator is still possible, especially for those from economically privileged backgrounds. This is no longer sustainable. Museums, together with the art system, must take responsibility for addressing this imbalance by creating tools, pathways, and opportunities that allow disadvantaged talents to emerge and grow.

  Under your direction, ART CITY — a contemporary art event that takes place in various venues in Bologna in conjunction with ArteFiera — has gained increasing visibility. Looking to the future, which area of the city would you like to transform into the next major space for artistic activation?
  Since I took over as artistic director, ART CITY has gone through several phases: from special events with major international artists — from Tino Sehgal to Gregor Schneider, from Zakharov to Castellucci — to a project that is increasingly rooted in the territory and capable of recounting it through contemporary art. After working on Morandi’s sites and the city’s ten historic gates, in 2026 we will open to the public some exceptional sites linked to the University of Bologna, the oldest in the Western world, founded in 1088, and we are already imagining a very ambitious project for 2027. The goal remains the same: to transform a different part of the city each time into a large field of artistic activation, bringing out identities, memories, and possibilities that we may not have looked at enough yet.

  

  Throughout your career, you have demonstrated a search for balance between production and ethical responsibility. How do you reconcile the urgency of supporting contemporary production with the need to avoid cultural overproduction?
  During the pandemic, we wondered whether the exhibition and fair models had come to an end. The facts have shown the opposite: not only have they returned, but cultural consumption has intensified. I believe that museums must take responsibility for reflecting on this acceleration: avoiding ephemeral productions, choosing to work over longer periods, prioritizing depth over quantity, reducing waste and temporary installations.
  Museums must return to being bastions of complexity: places that cultivate meaning, not just events.

  After years of institutional assignments, do you ever miss the position of independent curator, which allows you to act without the constraints of a public museum?
  I worked as a curator — always within institutions — for many years, and today I am happy with the role I play. I don’t see it as a departure from curating, but as an extension of it: my role is to provide scientific and strategic direction to the institution, while the daily research on artists and projects is the responsibility of the internal and external curators with whom I collaborate. They are the ones who can devote themselves continuously to investigating the present.
  I deeply enjoy this work, it stimulates me every day, and I feel I still have a lot to say. I also believe that I could bring this experience to different institutional, geographical, and cultural contexts, continuing to measure myself against new challenges. I don’t miss anything from the past: it is the present, with its responsibilities, that really motivates me.

  Alice Longo

  Lorenzo Balbi

  MAMbo

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  The text has been translated in English using AI

  by

  Alice Longo

  December 11 · 25

• On the collective function of artistic practices. Interview with Charlotte Laubard

  IT

  In this conversation, Charlotte Laubard explores her interest in self-taught art and her critique of the myth of the artist as genius, proposing a vision of art as a collective and socially situated practice. Laubard highlights the transformative potential of art and recognizes curating as playing a fundamental role in co-creation and facilitation.

  Born in 1974, Charlotte Laubard was director (2006-2023) of the CAPC ‒ Musée d’art contemporain in Bordeaux and is currently professor of Art History and Theory at HEAD in Geneva, where she also served as director of the Department of Visual Arts (2017-2023).
  She has worked in New York, Turin, and Kiev in international institutions dedicated to contemporary artistic creation and has curated numerous exhibitions, including the Swiss Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale with artists Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, and the group exhibition L’énigme autodidacte at the MAMC+ in Saint-Etienne in 2021-2022.
  She is an art historian and independent curator, as well as co-founder of the Société suisse des Nouveaux commanditaires. This interview was an opportunity to explore some of the research topics that characterize her academic and curatorial career.

  SELF-TAUGHT ART AND CURATING

  In your work, you have explored the issue of autodidactism in art, questioning the institutional processes at stake for its legitimacy. Many great pioneers of curating ‒ from Harald Szeemann to Pontus Hultén ‒ did not have a formal academic background, because curating as a discipline did not yet exist. Today, however, the figure of the curator is becoming institutionalized, with the risk of standardization. In this context, what space remains for a self-taught and innovative dimension of curating?
  The risk for any curator today is to think in keywords ‒ to approach the complexity of reality through a categorical reading that is reductive. The major flaw in much of today’s artistic and curatorial practice can be summed up in a single word, in my view: the aboutness. To avoid this pitfall, I often encourage my art students to approach reality through a detail that escapes attention, that resists understanding, and that unfolds a whole series of questions ‒ sometimes of an abyssal nature.

  Your research focuses on the digital dimension not only as a technological innovation but as a structural factor of cultural change. In this scenario, do you think there is a risk that self-taught artists, instead of inventing alternative paths, will increasingly rely on models and archives generated by AI and self-learning algorithms?
  There is one thing I know from having studied self-taught practices, as well as the practices of unlearning that were so prevalent in modern and contemporary art ‒ and from spending time with art students: anything that can facilitate learning and expression is worth embracing. History shows this time and again: whenever a technology has been designed to be used with almost no technical knowledge, it enables a broader public to seize it and express themselves. Of course, this also generates a great deal of normativity. Those who manage to stand out tend to use such tools in deviant, non-conforming ways ‒ whether consciously or not ‒ which often proves far more conducive to creative accidents and unexpected discoveries.

  

  ART AGENCY AND COLLECTIVE PRACTISES

  You invite us to move away from the idea of the isolated artist-genius, to recover a collective practice in the production of art, and a role for art that is not only contemplative but operational. How could this perspective redefine not only the criteria for artistic legitimacy, but also the very function of the institutions that preserve and display artworks?
  In the past ‒ and still today ‒ too much importance has been placed on the artist’s intentions. This burden confers both enormous responsibility and a certain fragility: the artist must constantly meet the imperative to say something original, endlessly reinvented, while also managing the anxiety that arises when their work fails to connect, when their intentions are not understood. Yet the reality is that everyone who experiences an artwork projects their own intentions onto it ‒ intentions that may diverge considerably. The very existence of the work, and the social legitimacy it gradually acquires, depend on this process of co-construction and co-creation. We would have much to gain by letting go of the myth of genius and our attachment to authorship, in order to focus instead on the effects and experiences that artworks produce.

  In the letter to visitors written on the occasion of Moving Backwards, the Swiss Pavilion you curated at the 2019 Venice Biennale, you invited people to move beyond the modernist and Western reading of art as formal or conceptual advancement, in order to restore its active role in society. What kind of agency can we recognise in art today, in a fragmented and globalised society?
  Art not only heightens sensitivity, strengthens critical judgment, and broadens the field of consciousness ‒ it can also protect, heal, grant access to invisible entities, influence the course of existence, resolve situations, affirm shared values, commemorate, bring people together, and celebrate… It seems to me that by embracing all these roles of art, we can restore social legitimacy to creative practices and make the art world genuinely more inclusive. This means, quite concretely, that aesthetic contemplation is only one among many possible ways of relating to creation.

  

  ART AND CO-CREATION 

  You are the co-founder and mediator of the Société suisse des Nouveaux commanditaires, an initiative that allows anyone ‒ regardless of age, origin or profession ‒ to collaborate with an artist or mediator to commission a work. From your experience, what are the issues that most mobilise citizens today?
  The Nouveaux commanditaires (“New Patrons”) initiative enables groups of citizens to commission an artist to respond to a collective issue ‒ for instance, to strengthen social bonds, give visibility to a cause, revalue a place, or share a memory. The Nouveaux commanditaires make artistic creation a tool of democratic action, accessible to all, producing works that emerge in response to real needs and social concerns meaningful to the communities in which they take root. What continues to amaze me most about this approach is how the commissioners gradually become open to the most contemporary and radical forms of art, even though they often begin with rather clichéd or simplistic notions of what art is. The explanation is, in fact, quite simple: the work responds to their need. It offers them an “imaginary leap” that often helps resolve or transcend ‒ on a symbolic level ‒ situations that may be complex.

  You have often insisted that creation is collective by nature, and that the work lives in its relationship with its audiences. In this sense, curating is no longer just mediation, but becomes co-creation. How do you imagine a curatorial practice capable of giving shape to these collective energies without being reduced to simple social facilitation?
  I think it’s perfectly fine to be a facilitator. With the Nouveaux commanditaires, my role is to help people and artists work together, in mutual respect for each other’s skills. My ambition in this context is to produce works that are legitimate both socially and artistically. Ultimately, it’s about transforming the roles of all the actors in the art world: the artist, the curator, and those who experience art. In short, it’s about changing the very way the history of art is conceived and written. Quite an ambition ‒ one that surely restores a sense of dignity to the role of facilitator, doesn’t it?

  

  If curating has a political task, not just an aesthetic one, what do you think is its most urgent function today: to create common sense, to encourage dissent or to imagine new forms of coexistence?
  Common sense and dissent are both at stake in our current era, one deeply marked by populism. At a time when antagonism is so pervasive, I believe we should think of art and curating as practices of agonism ‒ to borrow a concept from philosopher Chantal Mouffe. The most effective artistic practices are those capable of welcoming diverse perceptions and interpretations. Their polysemy ‒ their resistance to unilateral meaning ‒ is their true strength.

  Alice Longo

  Charlotte Laubard

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  The text has been translated in English using AI

  by

  Alice Longo

  November 6 · 25

• Decoloniality and culture: the story of the Owneh project from Palestine

  IT

  The proliferation of decolonial rhetoric in the Western art market risks emptying the political meaning of actions aimed at decolonisation. In this scenario, the Palestinian initiative Owneh proposes a different approach: it does not thematise decoloniality, but exercises it through infrastructural practices of solidarity and self-determination.

  In recent decades, the language of contemporary art has been enriched by the term “decolonial” to indicate a critical reflection on all institutions, including cultural ones, that have reinforced colonial rhetoric. Exhibitions, reinterpretations of museum collections, open calls, residencies, talks and biennials make decolonisation the main theme of their content, but visitors and readers must be able to distinguish between simple rhetoric and actions aimed at radically changing hierarchies and the system.

  

  FROM LANGUAGE TO STRUCTURE: THE PARADOX OF DECOLONIALITY

  First of all, it is useful to make a distinction between postcolonial and decolonial. Postcolonial studies emerged after the end of colonialism and analyse its impact and political, economic, cultural and identity-related legacy on colonised countries. The decolonial approach aims to be not only critical and reflective, but above all active: it aims to create autonomous, self-determining narratives of those peoples historically subjugated by the West.
  The great paradox is that many Western art institutions adopt this term in a discursive rather than structural way: while language is updated with terms such as “inclusivity”, “deconstruction” and “care”, important critical issues remain. Above all, there remains a dependence on Western funding – banks, government agencies, multinational corporations – and a vertical curatorial system: the West continues to retain decision-making power over what to represent, perpetuating dynamics of representation of the “other” and thus maintaining control of the narrative.
  In this way, even works created in radical contexts are absorbed by the system as aesthetics of discomfort, transforming dissent into symbolic and commercial value. Thus, even when a work retains a political message, it is incorporated by institutions that claim to be progressive, converting it into cultural capital and continuing to operate with extractive, colonial logic. Inequality not only remains, but is masked by virtuous language, disguised as inclusion and ultimately aestheticised in the name of “ethical profit”.
  Decolonial aesthetics cannot be spectacle: it should be a practice of care. It would be truly decolonial to leave free will – on how and whether to show themselves – to the people who have been victims of colonialism and imperialism. This applies to artists as much as it does to curators. It would be necessary not to thematise decoloniality, but to transform the structure of cultural production.

  OWNEH: CURATORSHIP AS INFRASTRUCTURE

  The Owneh project embodies precisely this logic. It is an initiative of thirty Palestinian civil society organisations, formed in the wake of 7 October 2023 and the subsequent accelerated genocide perpetrated in Gaza. The principles that led to the establishment of this initiative concern the rejection of global funding systems based on historical exploitation that have prolonged the occupation in Palestine; the rejection of politically conditioned funding that imposes geographical restrictions and operational limitations; and a commitment to strengthening Palestinian resources, volunteerism and solidarity.

  

  
  The mission is not only economic, it is curatorial in the broadest and most radical sense of the term. By creating a Solidarity Fund, a Resources Basket and an AID Watch platform to monitor donation mechanisms, Owneh practices a reappropriation of the tools of cultural production and distribution. In fact, over 60% of the current signatories to the initiative are artistic and cultural organisations, many of which operate in the visual, performance or community art fields. The primary goal is not to produce or exhibit works, but to curate a context, restoring the political, collective and infrastructural dimension to the curatorial gesture.
  To date, the Owneh Initiative, through its Solidarity Prints for Palestine campaign, has raised approximately $20,000 for the Solidarity Fund, created to support Palestinian organisations active in art and culture that refuse conditional donations, and to set up psycho-social workshops that use the arts to help adults and children affected by the trauma of genocide.
  In an art system based on power and profit, Owneh stands out as a warning and an alternative, truly decolonial infrastructural and curatorial model. It invites us, as visitors and cultural operators, to think about how much our practices, even artistic ones, are truly free from market logic, conditional funding, and predatory representation.
  Decoloniality is not proclaimed, it is practised, in the slow work of redistributing power, resources and possibilities.

  Alice Longo

  The Owneh Initiative

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  The text has been translated in English using AI

  by

  Alice Longo

  October 30 · 25

• Yeast Photo Festival 2025: an example of widespread curatorship in Salento

  IT

  Involving palaces, oil mills and farms, the festival transforms the Salento area into a curatorial device that encourages people to reflect on the relationship between food, image and sustainability. Open until 9 November, the event explores the paradox between abundance and scarcity through fourteen photographic projects in the exhibition “(N)ever Enough”.

  On 25 September 2025, the fourth edition of the Yeast Photo Festival, entitled (N)ever Enough, was inaugurated. This international contemporary photography exhibition explores the relationship between food, territory and image. This year’s theme is the current paradox between consumerist abundance and scarcity of resources: while one part of the world allows itself the luxury of wasting food, another survives or suffers from hunger. Fourteen projects make up a visual atlas in which food is the starting point for investigating injustice, identity, technology and power. The solo exhibition by the great British photographer Martin Parr stands out, with over sixty images that irreverently describe the hypocrisies of consumer society.
  The artistic direction is by Edda Fahrenhorst with Flavio&Frank and Veronica Nicolardi, while the guest curators are Jan von Holleben, curator of Martin Parr’s children’s exhibition Wow!, and Maria Ghetti and Nora Schianchi, winners of the festival’s first Open Call for Curators.

  

  YEAST PHOTO FESTIVAL: THE CHALLENGE OF WIDESPREAD CURATORSHIP

  Founded in 2022 in the Salento village of Matino, the festival confirms and expands its widespread format, with a total of nine locations scattered throughout the area: Palazzo dei Marchesi del Tufo, Casa del Professore, Aranceto and Frantoio Ipogeo in Matino; Palazzo Scarciglia in Lecce; Masseria Le Stanzìe in Supersano; KORA Centro del Contemporaneo in Palazzo Baronale de Gualtieriis in Castrignano De’ Greci. These historic venues have been joined by Spiaggia della Purità, in the centre of Gallipoli, and the Pietro Cavoti Civic Museum in Galatina, a city that symbolises the historical, cultural and culinary heritage of Salento.
  If curating a photographic exhibition is challenging due to the fragile nature of the medium, the saturation of images in visual culture and the conceptual ambiguity between testimony and interpretation, the difficulties increase precisely because of the widespread model of the festival: having multiple venues, some dozens of kilometres apart, risks fragmenting the meaning and creating disorientation among visitors. Furthermore, the chosen venues, both rural and historical, are not neutral containers; on the contrary, they have an aesthetic personality that must be taken into account.

  

  
  In Italy, several national and international thematic photography festivals have chosen not to limit the exhibition to a single venue, but to spread it out. Examples include Foto/Industria, the biennial photography exhibition on industry and work promoted by the MAST Foundation in Bologna; Cortona On The Move in the province of Arezzo; PhEST in Monopoli, which explores the relationship between the Mediterranean Sea, identity and contemporary imagery; SI Fest in Savignano sul Rubicone and the Ragusa Foto Festival. In all these cases, despite the plurality of exhibition venues, the experience is limited to a single city or village, usually within walking distance in a small area.

  THE ROLE OF EXHIBITION SPACES FOR YEAST PHOTO FESTIVAL

  Yeast Photo Festival, on the other hand, adopts a widespread curatorial approach on a large scale: the venues are not concentrated in a single urban centre. Here, mobility becomes part of the project: the territory itself is the medium, and the physical distance between the venues is conceptually part of the experience. Visitors are forced to move around, to take the time to observe, to recognise connections, to create their own path. The Salento region itself is emblematic of the paradox between abundance and scarcity: it can be said to embody the tension of the theme (N)ever Enough. The visual richness of the landscape contrasts with the material fragility of the territory, which is suffering from desertification caused by Xylella, overtourism and depopulation. Culturally, too, Salento is suspended between tourist overexposure and a structural lack of institutions and resources for cultural production.
  Even the venues chosen – oil mills, orange groves, palaces and museums – are material witnesses to the theme. On the one hand, agricultural spaces represent production, labour and the present: they are environments of transformation, places where matter changes state. Historic buildings, on the other hand, embody memory and symbolic power. Buildings “preserve”, oil mills “transform”: two fundamental functions also in curating, archiving and metabolising.

  

  
  The works do not merely occupy these spaces, but interact with them through analogy or contrast. In the underground oil mill in Matino, for example, photographer Blake Little presents Preservation: a project in which the transience of the human body is juxtaposed with the eternity of honey. Naked bodies covered in this substance lose their individual character and resemble living sculptures. In contrast, the exhibition Snack It! by Martin Parr at Palazzo dei Marchesi del Tufo works by contrast, where images become icons, but pop icons of our time: fast food hamburgers, packets of crisps and famous fizzy drinks.
  Yeast Photo Festival is making a name for itself on the photography festival scene thanks to its curatorial specificity and because it is inspired by values that are being rediscovered in society and contemporary art: on the one hand, the need to slow down and reclaim time; on the other, the overcoming of the sterility of the white cube in favour of a situated curatorship that serves not only to enhance the works on display, but also to reactivate the territory and the places that host them.

  Alice Longo

  Yeast Photo Festival

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  The text has been translated in English using AI

  by

  Alice Longo

  October 23 · 25

• Parabita per il contemporaneo: a project of art, urban regeneration, and community care 

  IT

  In Parabita, in the province of Lecce, has taken shape a public art initiative that interweaves care, community and territory. Through site-specific interventions, urban heritage is transformed into a shared collection and art becomes an everyday gesture and collective responsibility. 

  Parabita is a town in the province of Lecce, in the heart of Salento, which ‒ thanks to the administration of mayor Stefano Prete ‒ is experiencing a unique artistic and cultural development through the Parabita per il contemporaneo project. The aim is to create a permanent collection of contemporary artworks owned by the municipality itself, which not only enabled their realization but also acquired them, effectively becoming an art collector. Currently, the projects Votiva and Ipogea are revitalizing the town, turning it into an open-air laboratory and museum, which the local community is invited to care for on a daily basis. 

  VOTIVA

  Curated by Flavia Bonino and Laura Perrone in 2024, Votiva consists of seventeen works installed in former votive shrines ‒ a distinctive feature of the Salento territory. These are small niches embedded in the town’s walls, which once housed statues or images of saints and Madonnas, serving as small neighborhood altars that expressed a popular rituality also characterized by social functions, as they were gathering points. Just as those sacred figures were believed to protect streets, houses, and inhabitants, the entire community cared for the niches. Votiva aims to recreate this communal practice: the shrines act as devices reactivating collectivity for the common good. The selected works are by some of the most significant figures on the Italian and international art scenes, including Francesco Arena, Felice Levini, Helena Hladilová, Namsal Siedlecki, Liliana Moro, Adrian Paci, ektor garcia, Gianni Dessì, Mimmo Paladino, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Ludovica Carbotta, Chiara Camoni, Giovanni Lamorgese, Claudia Losi, Luigi Presicce, K.R.M. Mooney, and Claire Fontaine. Through these site-specific works, it is possible to experience the sacred beyond religion; although reflecting different artistic approaches, they engage in a harmonious dialogue and blend into the urban environment that hosts them. During the conference inaugurating the second project of the season, the Parabita per il contemporaneo app was also presented, allowing geolocation of the shrines, with narration by Michele Placido and Francesco Pannofino, along with the catalog published by Cura Books. 

  IPOGEA

  Ipogea is an evolution of Votiva. The idea originated during a walk taken by artistic director Giovanni Lamorgese and the mayor through the town’s municipal storage areas, and it was developed under the curatorship of Carmelo Cipriani. In these storages, stone basins used for collecting oil produced in the underground oil mills (frantoi ipogei) were found. Francesco Arena, who had already participated in Votiva, was commissioned to create the first work of this second project, ensuring continuity. With his piece La Grotta, Arena performed a second decontextualization of these basins, placing them on the munteddha, the town’s highest and oldest area, beneath which lies a large underground chamber ‒ once an invisible workplace for hundreds of farmers who shaped the economic and cultural history of the town. The sites hosting the artworks are undergoing redevelopment, so that art, beyond its social function, has a transformative power for the territory. The local community is involved throughout the project phases and is called upon to take responsibility not only for the existing heritage but also for the heritage still being formed. 
  Votiva and Ipogea connect the identity of Parabita with contemporary art, honoring traditions and roots that are simultaneously reinterpreted, revitalized, and valorized. 

  Alice Longo 

  https://www.comune.parabita.le.it/informazione/parabita-per-il-contemporaneo
  https://www.instagram.com/parabitaperilcontemporaneo/

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  Translated with AI 

  by

  Alice Longo

  July 24 · 25

• The Animal That Therefore I Am: Mattia Sinigaglia’s solo exhibition in Venice 

  IT

  At A plus A Gallery in Venice, through works that intertwine painting and sculpture, Mattia Sinigaglia offered a deeply personal interpretation of the relationship between humans and animals. Starting from a glance. 

  It was nighttime when Mattia Sinigaglia (b. 1989, Sirmione) came face to face with the fox that would inspire his exhibition The Animal That Therefore I Am. While driving, the animal darted across the road in front of him. A sudden stop. A fleeting encounter ‒ an unexpected, rapid exchange of glances. This form of connection, although silent, has something intense and primordial in it. The title of the exhibition is drawn from a text by philosopher Jacques Derrida, who recounted a similar moment: stepping out of the shower, he found himself being watched by his cat, and was overcome by a sense of shame. 

  MATTIA SINIGAGLIA ON SHOW IN VENICE 

  At the dawn of time, the relationship between humans and animals was more immediate and frequent. Animals were central to mythology, revered as deities. The very origins of art, in the caves of Lascaux, are rooted in this primordial encounter between human and animal. Today, that connection is more mediated. Derrida argues that humanity is now clothed in technique ‒ that is, in culture. In Sinigaglia’s canvases, it is the symbolic elements inherited from Western cultural history, from art to science, that stand between the depicted animal’s gaze and the human eye of the viewer. 
  On view at A plus A Gallery in Venice through March 21, 2025, The Animal That Therefore I Am is Sinigaglia’s first solo show composed of his whole artistic production developed over four years. Ti vede ‒ the painting that captures the fox encounter ‒marked the beginning of this journey. The exhibition included two types of works: large-scale paintings and sculptural paintings. Entirely new and never before exhibited, the pieces are composed of a variety of materials, including hand-carved wooden frames, ceramic elements and metal leaf. The narrative unfolds through the interplay of these diverse media ‒ through their dialogue. 

  SINIGAGLIA’S EXHIBITION AT A PLUS A GALLERY 

  Sinigaglia’s process is never the same. Sometimes it begins with a lived experience, as in FlyDance, inspired by a sweltering summer afternoon when a buzzing fly disrupted the stillness of his studio. The abstract painting captures the rhythm and movement of his attempt to shoo the insect away. At other times, inspiration comes from the intricate grain of fine woods ‒ plane tree or chestnut ‒ sourced from carpenters in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, where Sinigaglia lives and works. The creative process is not linear. Though he may begin with a sketch or concept, the material itself often reshapes the idea. The artist starts with the search for an image; then comes the frame, followed by a sculptural element to fill a void ‒ or vice versa. Media shift fluidly, with no clear hierarchy. 
  Mattia Sinigaglia shows the ancestral bond between humanity and animality. He does so by disrupting traditional structures of dominance ‒ both among the subjects of his works and within the materials themselves. The result is a dynamic interchange of narrative and compositional planes that is never predictable, never the same. 

  Alice Longo 

  https://aplusa.it/#
  https://www.instagram.com/castom.liri/

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  • 

  Translated with AI

  by

  Alice Longo

  July 24 · 25

• A contemporary symbolism. Interview with the painter Riccardo Albiero

  IT

  From Late Gothic to queer art, Riccardo Albiero’s painting is rich in historical references, yet marked by a strong personal identity and distinctive style.

  Riccardo Albiero was born in 1996 in Chioggia. He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and is currently enrolled at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in the program for Economics and Management of Arts and Cultural Activities. The young artist is represented by two galleries: Candy Snake in Milan and Double Double in Beijing, the latter of which hosted his solo show in March 2025. We met him in his studio on Giudecca Island, during his residency at the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation in Venice.

  THE INTERVIEW WITH RICCARDO ALBIERO

  Your painting features recurring elements: the greyhound, the thistle, the stars. When did you start choosing these symbols and shaping your style through them?
  About three years ago, I began selecting recurring subjects ‒ some drawn from art history, particularly from the Italian and Flemish Late Gothic, so more traditional and codified, and others more cryptic, rooted in personal biography.

  Which artists or aspects of the Late Gothic period fascinated you and made their way into your painting?
  Certainly, the most influential artists for me have been Gentile da Fabriano, Pisanello, and Botticelli. Formally, I feel very connected to the encyclopedic tendency and the organization of the image within the painting, where highly realistic elements are juxtaposed with particularly abstract or stylized symbols. As for content, the fantastic and magical imagery captivated me since childhood ‒ but so did the idea of spirituality, which for me doesn’t mean faith in God, but in a primordial Chaos.

  One of your iconic figures, the greyhound, has moved from an immaterial realm into a room interior. Does this reflect an evolution in your poetics?
  It reflects more the increasing complexity of spatial representation. I paint interiors and gardens with hedges that symbolize an inner, introspective space ‒ one where even imprecisions and perspective errors are allowed.

  THE SUBJECTS PAINTED BY RICCARDO ALBIERO

  Male figures, already central in your earlier works, now resemble saints. Can you tell us more about them?
  I’ve noticed the resemblance too, but there’s no idealization or salvific connotation to them. Rather, they’re a visual phenomenon hovering between man and idea ‒ there’s no intent toward realism. I think of the Fayum funerary portraits, of Botticelli, but also of queer art, to show the many forms virility can take.

  What kind of relationship do you hope viewers will have with your work?
  I hope the natural-world subjects evoke delight, pleasure, and a sense of fulfillment, while I’d like the portraits to spark a kind of sentimental education. In general, I never see art as an isolated expressive act ‒ it’s always an offering to the public.

  RICCARDO ALBIERO AND THE ART MARKET

  You’re young but already well positioned in the art market. Was this always your goal? Actually, no. I’ve been represented by two galleries for about two years ‒ since I graduated with my MFA in Painting in Bologna. That’s when I realized that, if I wanted to make a living from my art, I had to commit to it seriously. Then luck played its part too.

  How do you imagine your art will evolve in the future?
  As far as painting goes, I think my subjects still have a lot to offer ‒ though physiognomies and faces may change. I’m also interested in the world of metals and installations. Plus, I feel the need to deepen my knowledge of art history, including other cultures, and that might influence my work as well.

  You once said: “My research is based on introspection in search of a truth”. What kind of awareness do you feel you’ve reached today?
  I believe I’ve developed spiritual convictions that form the foundation of my value system ‒ and, consequently, my representational system. Still, I think I’ll always keep questioning what new things I have to offer.

  Alice Longo

  https://www.instagram.com/riccardoalbiero_/

  • 

  • 

  • 

  Translated with AI

  by

  Alice Longo

  July 10 · 25

• Curating value, preserving time. A conversation with Filippo Lotti from Art Defender 

  IT

  Filippo Lotti, former director of Sotheby’s Italia, and now CEO of Art Defender – a company specializing in the safeguarding, conservation, and protection of valuable artworks – reflects on the meaning of “curating” in art today, where market dynamics, critical thought, and responsibility converge. This interview explores recent transformations in the art world and the increasingly strategic role of curatorship.

  Born in Arezzo in 1963, Filippo Lotti is a singular presence in the Italian art scene. His unconventional career has seamlessly bridged thought, discipline, strategy, and aesthetics. After graduating in Philosophy from the University of Florence, he joined Sotheby’s Italy in 1987 as the head of rare books department ‒ pursuing a lifelong passion. He worked at the prestigious auction house for nearly four decades, eventually becoming its General Manager.

  In 2024, he took on a new role as CEO of Art Defender, which provides logistics, protection, and conservation services for artworks. This transition is not a farewell to the art market, but rather a return to the original sense of curating: to take care.
  We met him to discuss what it means to “curate” today, the value and responsibilities embedded in the art market, and the often subtle, sometimes tense, dialogue between artists, collectors, and institutions.

  THE INTERVIEW WITH FILIPPO LOTTI 

  You have a background in philosophy. How did you balance critical thinking with the commercial logic of your professional career?
  One of the advantages of studying philosophy is that it proves useful in virtually any profession. A minimum of critical thinking is essential even in a commercial role like mine, which also includes a part of academic research.

  Over your forty years at Sotheby’s Italy, you’ve witnessed many shifts in the art market, such as the transition from live auctions to private sales and digital platforms. What are the key differences in managing these formats?
  The procedure is largely the same, but live auctions rely on the auctioneer and the auction house to create a compelling, almost theatrical atmosphere to encourage participation. Online sales are user-friendly and convenient, but inevitably more impersonal. The rise of private sales was a natural response to a globalized market with increasingly varied client needs.

  Auctions are often perceived as distant from curatorial practices, yet formats like Contemporary Curated involve curators and cultural figures from fashion, food, and other sectors to help shape the sales catalogue. How important is curatorship from a commercial perspective? Could it help attract younger collectors?
  Absolutely. Beyond the academic or scholarly value, strong curatorship brings specificity and uniqueness to a project ‒ even a commercial one ‒, making it more appealing to buyers and more engaging for younger audiences.

  Has a curatorial intuition – yours or someone else’s – ever had a decisive impact on an artist’s career or a sale?
  Perhaps not decisive, but it certainly contributed to the commercial consolidation of an artist. One example is the monographic sale dedicated to Damien Hirst by Sotheby’s London in 2008.

  AUCTIONS, THE MARKET AND CURATING ACCORDING TO FILIPPO LOTTI

  The role of the curator is changing: a hybrid between advisor, strategist, sometimes even becoming a brand for artists and collections. Is this an evolution that you also notice?
  I think it can be defined as such, especially at an international level. I’m not sure how desirable this evolution is, but it certainly reflects the times we live in.

  After dedicating most of your career to the art market, you’re now leading Art Defender. What does it mean to care for an artwork today?
  Caring for an artwork can be expressed in many ways: conservation, restoration, research, or enhancement, and each of these aspects requires increasingly specialized professional figures.

  Alice Longo 

  https://www.artdefender.it/

  • 

  Translated with AI

  by

  Alice Longo

  June 12 · 25