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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 2021. Curated by Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti

Palazzo Re Rebaudengo, Guarene, Cuneo, Italy 2 October - 28 November, 2021

Badly Buried

Beneath the Palazzo Re Rebaudengo, there lie underground tunnels. Nobody knows where they lead or what they hide, but some say that if you listen carefully at night, you can hear voices and see shadows turning quickly around the corners. Beneath the cover of domestic space, these tunnels might stand for how the fantastic is merely hiding in plain sight.

Badly Buried is a descent—a dive below to what lies beneath. Beyond secret tunnels that serve as our gateway to the subterranean, we begin to discern the underground as a shapeshifter: it is the soil, the subconscious, a mine, a sex dungeon, a cave, or a grave. It is a space where both the material and the imaginary coalesce.

The appeal of the underground has shaped mythology, epic poetry, and popular forms of literature across time. From 24th century BCE Egyptian myth of Osiris’ descent into the underworld to become master of the Afterlife, to Jean Valjean’s fall into the clammy sewers of Paris, that hide the wretched in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables in 1862. In Notes on the Underground (2008), historian Rosalind Williams surveys the subterranean as conceptual terrain, charting a genealogy of tales so ancient and universal that their fundamental structure—the opposition of surface and depth—may well be rooted in the structure of the human brain.

Descending into the underground and its inner worlds is an act of searching, of contending with the unknown, the abject, and the internal; of opening passages and holding space with the monstrous. Journeying downwards, the exhibition asks: What knowledge arises from the act of descending physically, psychologically, and socially? Emerging from the underground, what narratives do we uncover? What can obscurity reveal?

Having crossed thresholds between worlds, knowledge resurfaces in the form of performances, installations, and moving image works investigating notions of labor, secrecy, pleasure, monstrosity, and death. The works bring us from the bowels of a BDSM dungeon to a pixie’s bathroom, from the depths of the subconscious to the earth, and back again.

Jacopo Belloni’s sculptures and installations bring esoteric practices, rituals, and contemporary spiritual practices to the historical space of Palazzo Re Rebaudengo. Ilaria Vinci’s works are speculative in their nature—making use of fantastical realist narrations, she imagines alternative realities, while Alessandro di Pietro’s “TOMB WRITER” turns the palazzo into a tomb, where dead bodies return to the earth—a cyclical way of thinking about time.

While entering the room that holds Irene Coppola’s work might feel like ascending above ground, the scars she surfaces from recent history tell another tale. Using industrial materials, Coppola plants a ghostly orchard, where tropical plants silently testify to the violence of warfare and colonial intervention. Climbing further puts the viewer in front of GianMarco Porru’s “MALEDETTA.” In this three-channel video installation, we witness a hypnosis session where a voice offscreen reveals, in spellbinding detail, how Medea—a magician and master in the art of potions and poisons—turned into a monstrous figure as a result of forces far beyond her control.

Journeying into the underworld also means looking inward, into our own depths. For Badly Buried, Eleonora Luccarini nosedives into the abyss of her multidimensional self to wrestle with her alter ego, Leonard Santé, while Massimo Vaschetto explores BDSM culture wherein, resembling the katabasis motif in literature, sadomasochists descend to underworlds and return physically, emotionally, or spiritually transformed. There, the artist finds resonances with Christianity.

Sinking deeper into the underground of the Palazzo, Giovanni Giaretta’s media archaeology practice excavates fantasies of the cinema cavern and the minerality of our digital devices. Beneath slick surfaces, the extracted materials seep through. These excavations and extractions take us further down to the bitumen mines of Abbateggio, where Agnese Spolverini tells a story not only of hidden labor and oppressive working conditions, but the immense sympathy and solidarity needed to sustain life in this hostile environment.

 

Nothing stays underground for long when they are badly buried. The soil will erode, bringing secrets, suppressed knowledge, and social underworlds to light.

Curators

Alice Sarmiento

Alice Sarmiento was born and is based in Manila. She is a feminist, writer, independent curator, and full-time foster parent to seven kittens and one specially-abled cat. Prior to pursuing a Masters degree in Curatorial Studies from the University of the Philippines, she taught at the UP College of Home Economics, under the Clothing Technology Program. It was at this institution that she developed a more critical interest in the ideologies behind “women’s work” and other forms of emotional and affective labor, especially through their links to the global care chain, in which the Philippines is a major participant. 

Jade Barget

Jade Barget is a curator and culture worker based between Paris and London with an interest in screen, moving image and performance cultures. Her research centers on the force and limit of images, embodied spectatorship and the influence of media upon our sense of self, memory, and history. Jade co-runs XING, a curatorial platform championing visual culture from East Asia, Southeast Asia and its diasporas. Informed by decolonial, anti-imperialist and intersectional feminist thinking, XING researches and fosters South-to-South alliances. Her most recent projects include curated programmes for XING and Nottingham Contemporary and the commissioning of new works by Adam Christensen, Eva Gold, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi and Aaron Ratajczyk. Jade has written for a number of publications including AQNB, diaCRITICS Los Angeles Review of Books, THE SEEN, and Untitled-Folder. She graduated from the Curating Contemporary Art department at the Royal College of Art, London with distinctions and was laureate of the 2020 Young Curator bursary from the Bureau des Arts Plastiques of the Institut Français and the French Ministry of Culture.

Naz Cuguoğlu

Naz Cuguoğlu is a curator and art writer, based in San Francisco and Istanbul. Currently, she works as a Curatorial Fellow at Asian Art Museum. She held positions at KADIST, Wattis Institute, de Young Museum, SFMOMA Public Knowledge, among others. She is the co-founder of Collective Çukurcuma, experimenting with collaborative thinking processes through its reading group meetings and international collaborative exhibitions. She was as an artist advisor for Joan Mitchell Foundation, and a juror for Sondheim Artscape Prize 2021. Her writings were featured in SFMOMA Open Space, Art Asia Pacific, Hyperallergic, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, and elsewhere. She received her MA from California College of the Arts’ Curatorial Practice program; her BA in Psychology and another MA in Social Psychology from Koç University.

She curated exhibitions and programs internationally, at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Walters Art Museum, the Wattis Institute, 15th Istanbul Biennial Public Program, HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt, the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, Headlands Center for the Arts, Framer Framed, D21 Kunstraum Leipzig, Red Bull Art Around Istanbul, among others. She co-edited four books: Proximities: Folded Readings on the Archival (Haus der Kulturen der Welt: 2022), The Word for World is Forest (The Wattis Institute: 2020), Between Places (Verkstad Konsthall: 2016), After Alexandria, the Flood (Umur: 2015), and presented at institutions including TATE, Fotogalleriet Oslo, Rhode Island School of Design, Joan Mitchell Foundation, SALT, Norköpping Art Museum, and Contemporary Art Center New Orleans.

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

  • Jacopo Belloni

    Jacopo Belloni was born in 1992, Ancona. He lives and works in Geneva.

  • Irene Coppola

    Irene Coppola was born in 1991, Palermo. She lives and works in Palermo and Milan.

  • Alessandro Di Pietro

    Alessandro Di Pietro was born in 1987, Messina. He lives and works in Milan.

  • Eleonora Luccarini

    Eleonora Luccarini was born in 1993, Bologna. She lives and works in Bologna.

  • GianMarco Porru

    GianMarco Porru was born in 1989, Oristano. He lives and works in Milano.

  • Agnese Spolverini

    Agnese Spolverini was born in 1994, Viterbo.

  • Massimo Vaschetto

    Massimo Vaschetto was born in 1980, Torino. He lives and works in Milan.

  • Ilaria Vinci

    Ilaria Vinci was born in 1991, Cisternino. She lives and works in Zurich.

  • Giovanni Giaretta

    Giovanni Giaretta was born in 1983, Padova, Italy. He lives and works in Amsterdam.

Jury

Andrea Lissoni

Andrea Lissoni is the artistic director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich. Since 2014 he has been Curator of Film and International Art at the Tate Modern in London. He holds a PhD, has been curator at Hangar Bicocca in Milan since 2011, was professor at the Brera Academy from 2001 to 2013 and at Bocconi University since 2007. Co-founder of the cultural organization Xing, he is co-director of the international festival Live Arts Week-Gianni Peng in Bologna. He is curator and co-creator of the magazine Cujo and regularly collaborates with Mousse. He has been curator of group exhibitions including Circular (San Siro Stadium, Milan, 2004), Collateral. Quando l’arte incontra il cinema (Hangar Bicocca, Milan and SESC Pompeia, Sao Paulo, 2007), Check-in Architecture (Venice Architecture Biennale, 2008), Tudo (Pitti Immagine, Florence, 2011). Between 2011 and 2014 at HangarBicocca, he curated solo exhibitions by Céleste Boursier Mougenot, Angela Ricci Lucchi & Yervant Gianikian, Wilfredo Prieto, Carsten Nicolai, Tomàs Saraceno, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Mike Kelley, Ragnar Kjartansson, Micol Assael, Joan Jonas and Celine Condorelli.

Renaud Proch

Renaud Proch is Independent Curators International (ICI)’s Executive & Artistic Director, and from December 2009 to March 2013, he served as ICI’s Deputy Director. Prior to this, he was the Senior Director at the Project in New York, as well as the Director of MC, in Los Angeles. Originally from Switzerland, Proch studied in London and moved to the West Coast of the U.S. in 2001. He co-founded ART2102 of Los Angeles in 2003, a non-profit organization that realized projects by artists and curators on- and off-site; and the backroom in 2005, a growing artists’ archive and itinerant research-oriented project presented in five cities in the U.S., Mexico and France. In 2011, he co-curated with Khwezi Gule a retrospective of South African artist Tracey Rose for the Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa, and the Umea Bildmuseet, Sweden, which also traveled to the Nikolaj Kunsthal, in Copenhagen, Denmark.

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