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Young Curators Residency Programme

Every year since 2007 Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo promotes the Young Curators Residency Programme Torino. The project aims to support emerging curatorial practice while spreading knowledge of the Italian art scene on an international level.

Young Curators Residency Programme 2020. Curated by Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti

Palazzo Re Rebaudengo, Guarene d’Alba, Cuneo, Italy 3 October - 15 November, 2020

Waves Between Us

The 14th edition of the Young Curators Residency Programme unfolded against the backdrop of COVID-19’s gripping hold over northern Italy. The sounding alarm of this time – both literally and metaphorically – became a point of departure for the exhibition, uncovering a dual interpretation of the Italian term sirena. Known as both the mythological female figure of the sea and the sound of emergency, the sirena awakens our senses and orients us in the moment whilst amplifying an urgency to pause and listen.

In Homer’s The Odyssey, the sirena is portrayed as a perilous and powerful air and sea creature – a female, or gang of females, whose song seduces the poem’s protagonist Odysseus and his crew as they attempt to helm their ship home. Listening to their voices poses the threat of descending into the underworld with no return. Both divine and grotesque, the sirena lures the ego into a dissolved state, evoking delusion, seduction and an undoing of consciousness. In her seminal book For More than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression, Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero describes how the pathos of the story, ‘is concentrated on the deadly, seductive circuit between voice and hearing, sound and ear. As monstrous singers, or deadly women with powerful voices, the Sirens produce an acoustic pleasure that kills men’. Dwelling in the aqueous depths and on land, the sirena represents both proximity and remoteness experienced within our own world today. Therein, Waves Between Us reflects upon Cavarero’s claim, ‘distance is measured by the sound of the voice and not by the purview of the eye’.

In this exhibition, the sirena performs a unique slippage, weaving through each artists’ practice to explore sound as a mode of transmission, saltwater as a texture of connectivity, and the underworlds of the grotto and swamp as ecosystems of interaction and change. The artworks presented engage with embodiment in physical and collective forms; the flesh of our throats, the voices that reverberate from our mouths, the stories that resonate between our ears, and the memories that dwell in our guts. Inhabiting the ground floor and basement of the Palazzo Re Rebaudengo–nestled in the hills of Guarene–the exhibition provides a periphery for vocal, material and collective experimentation. Site-specific commissions by ALMARE, Benni Bosetto and Binta Diaw transgress normative boundaries of time and space, engaging with alternative narratives and shared rituals. Raffaela Naldi Rossano’s works on paper also materialize ritual, forming a nonlinear system of symbology and correspondence. The sculptural works of Bea Bonafini and Nuvola Ravera integrate natural and local materials into intimate vessels that echo the elements of our own watery bodies. Marco Giordano and Real Madrid’s sculptural installations evoke the erotics of subterranean space, queering organic and everyday objects as containers for liquid and vocal emission. Elisa Strinna’s video work navigates the nuanced channels of the Mediterranean Sea, while the Sicilian collective Femminote’s purchasing project Isola delle Femmine enacts the emancipatory potential of a borderless territory.

The artworks presented explore ‘saltwater as passage, saltwater as the medium of transport, saltwater as sweaty sign of our bodies’ exertions and tearful signs of our capacity for affect’ in the words of art historian Griselda Pollock. Traversing sculpture, sound, video and drawing, the wave is a connective thread that evokes movement between our bodies and the bodies of water around us, giving texture to the resonance of voices, the passage of sound, and unseen natural depths. As the world adjusts to the reality of its isolated enclaves, how will our subjectivities be nurtured within the walls of our houses, our grottos, and our oceans? How are systems of communication intervening to form new spheres of thought and connectivity? In both the exhibition and accompanying online platform, Waves Between Us engages with these questions, inviting artists to wrestle with myths, virality, and sonic experimentation to test new ways of being together.

Download the booklet of the exhibition

Click on the siren to visit the online platform of Waves Between Us, weekly updated with online commissions by exhibiting artists

Publication 2020

Curators

Alison Karasyk

Alison Karasyk (U.S.) is an independent curator based in Brooklyn, New York. Her research interests focus on the intersection of gender, space, memory and materiality. Karasyk has held curatorial and editorial positions at the North Norwegian Art Centre, the Brooklyn Museum, CRUSH Curatorial, the Museum of Modern Art, and Aperture Foundation, New York. She was Assistant Curator of the Lofoten International Art Festival (LIAF) 2017: I Taste the Future. Karasyk completed her MA at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard), New York, and her BA at Oberlin College, Ohio. She is the 2018 recipient of the Ramapo Curatorial Prize. Karasyk is currently working on a research and exhibition project aimed at cultivating new dialogues on the Scandinavian witchcraft trials and the relevance of these historical events of gendered and indigenous violence through the lens of contemporary art.

Camille Regli

Camille Regli (Switzerland) is an independent curator living and working in Zurich and Biel/Bienne after several years in London. Holding a MA in cultural studies at King’s College London, she further graduated in 2019 with a MAS in Curating at the Zurich University of the Arts. She gained experience working for institutions such as the Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the Istanbul Biennale, Block Universe, and the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève. Her curatorial research focuses primarily on ‘small’ (as opposed to overarching) narratives that sustain a feminist and speculative reading of contemporary societies. Since 2020, she is the co-founder and curator of KRONE COURONNE, a contemporary art centre in Biel/Bienne. She is also part of Collectif Détente, a curatorial trio with whom she conducts the research project ‘Stitches’ on the use of textile in current art practices. She regularly contributes to the academic journal OnCurating.org and other publications.

Katie Simpson

Katie Simpson (UK) is a London based curator and researcher. Her research investigates socio-political and economic concerns that affect the production of and accessibility to art, questioning hierarchies of culture through archival research, and thinking through feminist approaches to collaborative curatorial practice. She graduated with an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths College in 2018 and has since held the position of Associate Director at not-for-profit art organisation Jupiter Woods, London. She completed a Curatorial Fellowship at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London (2019) and held the position of Assistant Curator at Goldsmiths’ Exhibition Hub (2019). From 2014-2016, she was initiator and curator of a ten-month exhibition program, The Koop Project and Gallery Manager at Neue Froth Kunsthalle both Brighton, UK.

Coordinator

Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti

Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti (Desenzano del Garda, 1990) is an independent curator and art writer. In her practice she develops research-based exhibitions and public programmes, expanding and experimenting with the traditional format of object-based exhibitions. In 2018 she was the curator of the 6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Abracadabra. Other projects include Abstract Sex. We don’t have any clothes, only equipment with Guido Costa for Artissima, Turin 2019; Get Rid of Yourself (Ancora Ancora Ancora), Fondazione Baruchello, Rome 2019; Why Is Everybody Being So Nice?, De Appel and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 2017; Good Luck, See You After the Revolution, Uva, Amsterdam 2017; Dear Betty: Run Fast, Bite Hard!, GAMeC, Bergamo 2016. She held the position of Curator of the New Entries section of Artissima in 2018 and 2019. In 2018 she founded the performative and educational platform The School of the End of Time with artists Ambra Pittoni and Paul-Flavien Enriquez-Sarano, and from 2015 to 2018 she run the independent space CLOG in Turin. She curated publications such as Shifting views on Italian art. The curatorial residency as a research model (2020) and The New Work Times (2018), and her writings appeared in specialised magazines, artists books and museum publications. She gained her curatorial education at De Appel, Amsterdam; CAMPO12, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Visual Arts and Theatre, IUAV University, Venice and pursued curatorial training at Artists Space, New York. She completed the advanced course in Critical Theory of Society at Università Milano-Bicocca in 2021 and is currently enrolled in the Research-Based Master Programme Curatorial Critical Cybernetic Research Practices at HEAD, Geneva. She is the co-founder and currently Vice-President of AWI – Art Workers Italia.

Artists

ALMARE

Life Chronicles of Dorothea Ïesj S.P.U. Episode 1: On the morning of the Fifth Anniversary, 2020
Courtesy the collective. Photo ©️ Domenico Conte
Femminote
Marco Giordano

My Mouth in Your Mind (detail), 2019
Courtesy the artist, Frutta, Rome, and The Modern Institute, Glasgow. Photo © Domenico Conte

Listen With Your Mouth, 2019
Courtesy the artist, Frutta, Rome and The Modern Institute, Glasgow. Photo ©️ Domenico Conte
Nuvola Ravera

Soap Opera, 2017/2020
n collaboration with Giuseppe Ricupero. Courtesy the artist. Photo ©️ Domenico Conte

Big Babol (detail), 2017/2020
Courtesy the artist. Photo ©️ Domenico Conte
Real Madrid

Love but leave room for disappointment, 2018
Courtesy the artists. Photo ©️ Domenico Conte

Bacco Malato, 2019
Courtesy the artists. Photo ©️ Domenico Conte
Elisa Strinna

The Infrastructure (video still), 2018/2019
Courtesy the artist

Jury

Andrea Viliani

Andrea Viliani is an art critic and curator and, since 2013, Director of the MADRE, the public museum of contemporary art founded by Campania Region in Naples, where he organised exhibitions by Francis Alÿs, Thomas Bayrle, Daniel Buren, Mimmo Jodice, Mark Leckey, Fabio Mauri, Boris Mikhailov, Giulia Piscitelli, Vettor Pisani,Walid Raad, Ettore Spalletti, Sturtevant, Padraig Timoney, Mario García Torres/Alighiero Boetti. At MADRE he has produced as well seminars and publications by artists such as Gusmao&Paiva, Stephen Prina and Akram Zaatari and oversaw the ongoing projects Per_forming a collection and Progetto XXI. From 2009 to 2012 he worked as Director of the Fondazione Galleria Civica-Centro di Ricerca sulla Contemporaneità, Trento (Italy); from 2005 to 2009 he was Curator at MAMbo–Museo d’Arte Moderna, Bologna (Italy) where he presented an exhibition program focused on the contemporary legacy of the 60s/70s institutional critique and on a possible new approach to it (“institutional narrative”). From 2000 to 2005 he worked as Assistant Curator at the Castello di Rivoli-Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Torino (Italy). In 2012 Viliani was one of the six curatorial Agents/Core-Group of dOCUMENTA (13), co-curating with the Artistic Director Carolyn Christov Bakargiev and Aman Mojadidi the related position in Kabul and Bamiyan (Afghanistan). He also curated exhibitions and projects in various other institutions as, among the others, Paweł Althamer (MUSEION, Bolzano, Italy), Gabriele Di Matteo (FRAC Limousin, Limoges, France), David Maljković (GAMeC, Bergamo, Italia), Deimantas Narkevičius (Museo Marino Marini, Firenze, Italia) and Haris Epaminonda (Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venezia, Italy). Among the 60 “players” of the 2007 Biennale de Lyon, he is a contributor to the art magazines Flash Art, FROG, Kaleidoscope and Mousse.

Alessio Antoniolli

Alessio Antoniolli received his MA in Art History from Birkbeck College, University of London in 1998, specialising in issues of internationalism, diversity and cultural policies in the visual arts in the UK. He is currently the Director of Gasworks in London, and Triangle Arts Trust, where he is focusing on creating and supporting the development of artists’ projects in Africa, South America, South Asia and the Middle East. Previously, Alessio ran the International Residency Programme at Gasworks, curating a programme of artists’ residencies and outreach activities for visiting artists based outside the UK. During this time he was also involved with Triangle Arts Trust in the development of Batiscafo, an artist-led residency programme in Havana, Cuba.

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