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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 2024 Coordinated by Michele Bertolino
Palazzo Re Rebaudengo, Guarene, Italy May 18 – July 21, 2024
Our Rivers Share a Mouth
Our Rivers Share a Mouth gathers ten artists situated in Italy to reflect on the meaning of solidarity and sharing, across and with respect for differences in the plural and the singular. A rivermouth is where a river meets another, while the mouth is figured as the source of speech. Their juxtaposition speaks to the differential yet fluid relations that connect bodies with environments, sedimenting histories into archives, moving between lands, from rivers to seas, memories to emotions, and from the personal to the political.
In their diverse practices, the artists gathered in the exhibition deal with questions of collective memory, environmental justice, agentive bodies and community solidarity actions. Through re-membering, activating archives, and performing rituals of care and desire, the artists address ongoing legacies of imperialism and colonial infrastructures and how they mirror in multi-layered postcolonial realities. To face these realities entails reckoning with the ongoing destruction of lifeworlds and ecosystems through exploitation, extraction, and violence, affecting human and more-than-human conditions for life.
By suggesting imaginative ways to shift – to queer, to trans, to abolish, to repair, to affect – dominant narratives, artists contribute to an understanding of how local, global, social and personal struggles are interlinked across territorial borders and migrations of knowledge.
Annalisa Cannito, in collaboration with activists from the Bormida Valley, reactivates the archive of one of the first rural environmental movements in Italy with a century long history of resistance against ACNA, a chemical factory. Continuing her research In the Belly of Fascism and Colonialism, she rethinks the historical past, the economic dynamics of exploitation and evidence of the intertwining of the local and the global issues.
Maria Giovanna Abbate’s multi-media installation encompasses collaborative works of several artists and associations around the Volturno river. Navigating individual and environmental situations marked by tensions, precarity, and fragility with psychogeography, Abbate’s work reflects on the role of art in creating transformation.
Through listening and performance, Sandra Rilletti asks the public how they connect with their bodies and environments, and the stresses they carry. The Mediterranean emerges through myths and tales as a space for sleep and regeneration beyond patriarchal language, where whales and dolphins suggest somatic knowledge for moving together through grief in a troubled present.
On white sheets of silk, Adji Dieye uses photographic materials selected from Senegal’s national archives and her personal archive, recalling what is missing between colonial realities and individual memories, questioning the formation, experience and representation of diaspora identities.
Noura Tafeche connects art with activism through investigations into how celebrations and soft pastel aesthetics interact with violence, whether as manifestation or sublimation, cringe or revenge. Archiving and mapping the streams of images and data uploaded on social media, Tafeche takes a critical view of how Internet propaganda merges cuteness with war propaganda.
Touching on the recent industrial past and its movements of people with poetic attention to the ephemeral, Valerie Tameu traces how memories are made through personal and institutional archives. With I Miss You So Much, Tameu choreographs a collective re-membering of Black and working-class life and organising in 1980s Turin.
Derek MF Di Fabio’s artistic research practice is represented through one its many facets with a series of drawings. Spread through the space, they gesture toward queer and quantum feminist ways in which our senses and communities can accommodate plurality as well the unknown.
In the video work Kumeta, Genny Petrotta carefully tells the story of the peasant uprising of Repubblica Contadina that was founded in her home town Piana degli Albanesi in the 1940s. Artist takes care of the intergenerational transmission of trauma and the unforgotten past of violence lived with the Arbëreshë community.
Grace Martella’s photographic series brings in a disoriented narration that she experienced during adolescence. Reaching between the lyricism of Apulia’s landscapes and transfeminist perspectives on beauty, the works speak to a sublimated body that constantly changes, moves and leaves traces behind.
Liryc Dela Cruz’s video installation, II Mio Filippino: For Those Who Care to See, problematises the act of caretaking and questions the constructed identity posed on Filipino domestic care workers in Italy. By quietly bringing the invisible to the visible, the work unveils the question: can marginalised bodies truly rest?
On the occasion of the exhibition, a publication serves as an alternative space, an open rivermouth, for sharing and collecting materials. These include ongoing artistic researches, poetic writings, images relating to the artworks, personal documents, and further curatorial discussions, inviting the readers to negotiate their own understandings with encountered realities and connect thoughts beyond the physical exhibition space.
Curators
Jiayue He
Jiayue He is a curator, mediator, and researcher based in the UK and Shanghai. Her research focuses on understanding the infrastructures of public cultural institutions, exploring how cultures and artifacts are institutionalized, collected, displayed and further influence people’s perceptions and knowledge systems. Central to her curatorial values is a commitment to emphasize the situations and scenarios of individuals who, for various reasons, find themselves lost in translation amidst dominant histories and institutional exhibition-making processes. She completed her master’s degree in Curating Contemporary Art in 2023 at the Royal College of Art, London. Her graduation dissertation focused on problematising the complexity of care by discussing the perceptions of contemporary art curating and UK-based institutional practices. While studying at the Royal College of Art, Jiayue co-founded the Backitchen curatorial collective, a group dedicated to unpacking the historical and social construction of ‘Asian’ and exploring the potential of Asian art and its social intervention and identities. The group has curated solo artist and group shows at prominent organizations, including the Venice Arsenale, Behavan Gallery, and Liquid Gold Studios in London. In her forthcoming project at Staffordshire Gallery, London, where she collaborates with two artists, she works as the project curator, exploring the notion of contemporary archives and seeking diverse ways for individuals to connect with their roots and claim their identities through collective creativity.
Aigerim Kapar
Aigerim Kapar (Kokshetau, Qazaqstan, 1987) is a curator, artist, and interdisciplinary researcher whose practice brings together contemporary art, ecological justice, decolonial thought, and community-based research. In 2015, she co-founded Artcom Platform, a collective developing long-term artistic, educational, and public initiatives rooted in practices of care, collective memory, nomadic knowledge, and climate justice. In 2017, she initiated Art Collider, an experimental school connecting artists, scientists, local communities, and knowledge keepers through collaborative learning. Kapar currently co-leads Care for Balkhash, a long-term initiative that brings together artistic research, community engagement, and ecological care around the ecosystem of Lake Balkhash, and co-curates Interweaving Climate, Water(s) and Communities, a transnational exhibition and public programme examining hydrosocial relations, climate justice, and community-based knowledge. Her work as part of Artcom has been presented internationally, including at the 13th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2025) and the XI Jatim Biennale. She is currently co-developing new commissions for the Qatar Museums Quadriennale and Transmediale Berlin (2027).
Andria Nyberg Forshage
Andria Nyberg Forshage (she/they) is a writer, poet, curator and artistic researcher. Their work concerns trans and queer aesthetics, perception, desire and survival in between, outside, or against established frames. She is a Contributing Editor of Paletten Art Journal. In 2022-23 they were a participant of CuratorLab at Konstfack University of the Arts, Stockholm, engaging with the 4th Autostrada Biennale in Prizren. The same year she collaboratively curated Another Possible Inner Exterior Moment To Moment Nonlocation Location at Konsthall C in Stockholm, part of an ongoing project on transfeminist ways of un/making worlds and sense. They have given lectures on their research in many academic contexts, art institutions, and other spaces. Her writing—genre-queer and trans-disciplinary, critical and experimental—features in several art publications, poetry journals, and performances, as well as in anthologies including a forthcoming peer-reviewed reader on Queer Death Studies.
Coordinator
Michele Bertolino
Michele Bertolino (Savigliano, 1992) is Adjunct Curator at Centro Pecci, Prato, and tutor of CAMPO – a course in curatorial studies and practices at the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Turin. Since 2022, he has collaborated with Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo as coordinator of the Young Curators Residency Program. He has collaborated with various Italian and international institutions, including MAMbo (Bologna), Last Tango (Zurich), Modern Art Institute (Glasgow), HEAD (Geneva), Palazzo Gucci (Florence), among others. In 2025, he curated VIVONO. Arte e affetti, HIV-AIDS in Italia, 1982-1996, the first institutional exhibition to reconstruct the forgotten history of Italian artists affected by the HIV-AIDS crisis, and in 2026, together with Alessandra Acocella and Monica Gallai, he co-curated Verita Monselles. CARNALE, both exhibitions were presented at Centro Pecci, Prato. He edited Tongue on Flames and Porpora, photographic books by Lina Pallotta. He teaches in Italy and abroad. His writings have appeared in NERO Magazine, Flash Art and Mousse Magazine, and his essays have been published in several monographic volumes, including the most recent Satura on Louis Fratino (Mousse). In 2022, he published L’Ano Solare. A Year-Long Programme on Sex and Self-display with Il Colorificio and Albe e tramonti a Praiano with Giulia Crispiani. In 2020, he was visiting lecturer in the LAB.ZONE PETROLIO, class led by Lili Reynaud-Dewar at HEAD Genève. Between 2019 and 2021 he worked as assistant curator of the 2020 Art Quadriennale FUORI, held at Palazzo delle Esposizioni. In 2018-2019, he was Junior Curator at The Institute of Things to Come, with which he continued collaborating in 2020-2021 as curator of the research project Guerrilla against the Uncessing Hostilities of the Livings. In 2016, he founded, with Bernardo Follini, Giulia Gregnanin, and Sebastiano Pala, the curatorial collective Il Colorificio. He graduated in philosophy of art at the University of Turin and in 2015-2016 he participated in the CAMPO15 edition.
Artists
- Maria Giovanna Abbate
Maria Giovanna Abbate (b. 1991, Caserta, Italy) lives and works in Naples. Her interdisciplinary practice moves across sculpture, photography, site-specific performance and participatory research, investigating collective movement through its spatial, relational and ethological dimensions. She holds a degree in Materials Chemistry for Conservation, a Master’s degree in Exhibition Design from the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence, and a Master’s degree in Sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts of Naples, where she is currently a PhD candidate in Art, Music, Science, Territory and Community. Together with Francesco Capasso, she is co-founder of Opificio Puca, a research and artistic production centre between Naples and Caserta. Since 2021, she has been curator and artistic director of Oh, Ah, Sì! Sul fiume fuori rotta, a participatory art platform along the Volturno River, exploring territory, collective practices and forms of shared knowledge. Her work has been presented at Museo Madre, Naples (2026); Biennale Architettura – Padiglione Italia, Venice (2025); Galleria Alfonso Artiaco, Naples (2024); Artissima, Turin (2024); Expo della Scienza, Wuhu, China (2023); and Mole Vanvitelliana, Ancona (2020).
- Annalisa Cannito
Annalisa Cannito lives and works in Acqui Terme, Italy. Artist, researcher and activist working on the relations between power, territory and community across disciplines and geographies. Her mediums include multimedia installations, lecture-performances, interventions, archival activations and zines. Her main artistic and theoretical research is In the belly of fascism and colonialism, where she investigates this violent legacy in contemporary society and policies. Currently a PhD Fellow at the Academy of Fine Arts Napoli, with the art-based action research Rural Future: practices of memory and eco-regenerative art in the Bormida Valley. She studied Post Conceptual Art Practices at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (MA), Communication Science at the University of Bologna (BA) and Biology at the high school Barletti in Acqui Terme. Selected exhibitions: Meanders. Memories in Movement (2026/incoming); Our Rivers Share a Mouth (Guarene/2024); Mediterranea 19 (San Marino/2021); Titos Bunker (Konjic/2017); A Hole in the Sea (Stuttgart/2016); Resistance and Amnesia (Innsbruck/2015). Since 2017, her installation Lifesaver is part of the permanent collection of the Vienna Weltmuseum (AT). She was a visual arts fellow at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen (2014-15) and artistic coordinator of Djart (2014) and El Medreb (2016) in Algiers.
- Liryc Dela Cruz
Liryc Dela Cruz is an artist and filmmaker from Mindanao, Philippines and Rome, Italy. His works has been performed and shown at numerous international film festivals and contemporary art venues including: Locarno Film Festival; Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin; Matadero; Maison Européenne de la Photographie; UK New Artist; Artissima; MACRO Roma; Teatro di Roma; Mattatoio; and LaBiennale di Venezia. He’s also an alumni of Berlinale Talents 2020. Dela Cruz’s films are thematically related to his origins, history, biography and interiority, while his performances and research are focused on care, hospitality, indigenous practices, decolonial practices, post-colonial Philippines, and the transpacific trade of enslaved people. He is also involved with Pescheria collective and Merende. In 2024, he started working with Electropark Festival as curator and part of the international advisory board. Recently, Dela Cruz was nominated by the Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum as their Artica artist for 2024.
- Adji Dieye
Adji Dieye is a Senegalese and Italian artist born in 1991 in Milan, Italy. She lives and works between Dakar, Senegal, Milan, Italy and Zurich, Switzerland. Dieye holds a degree in New Art Technologies from the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera in Milan, Italy, and an MFA from the Zurich University of the Arts, ZHDK, in Zurich, Switzerland.
- Derek MF Di Fabio
Derek MF Di Fabio (they/them) looks into the possibilities of bodies being present in space and how knowledge is transmitted between generations, particularly looking at the power dynamics that dominate them. Di Fabio’s work includes workshops, scenographies, sculptures, audio walks, events, and collective practices. It comprises experiences that can be lived again and anew through a shared memory that can no longer be circumscribed by who/how/where.
- Grace Martella
Grace Martella was born in 2006 in Tiggiano, Lecce, Italy. In 2018, she began to approach photography as a means for investigating herself and the places where she lives. Through her images she tries to build narration and visual metaphors in order to reclaim and give new dimensions to her personal experience through adolescence as a transgender girl from South Italy.
- Genny Petrotta
Genny Petrotta ( b. 1990) is an Italian artist who lives and works in Palermo. Her artistic practice, based on video installation and writing, aims to sublimate a wide range of interests, spanning from anthropology to poetry and history. She graduated in Disciplines of the Arts and Cinema at the D.A.M.S. University in Palermo with a thesis on Reality, Ecstatic Truth and Factual Data in Werner Herzog’s films. Since 2016, she has been part of the art collective Il Pavone and exhibited at various festivals and exhibitions. Since 2017, she worked as assistant director for the artistic duo MASBEDO. In 2022, she directed the production of the works U Scantu by Elisa Giardina Papa presented at the 59th Venice Biennale and Alkestis by Beatrice Gibson presented at the British Art Show. In 2023, she won the 12th Italian Council with the project Mamma Perdonami and the On the Road 2023 Production Fellowship residency, hosted by Autostrada Biennale.
- Sandra Rilletti
Sandra Rilletti, Sandra (b. 1996, Rome): human inhabitant of the Mediterranean, daughter of an archeologist. Seeking lost myths and still unwritten tales about mermaids, cetaceans and methanotrophic deities.
- Noura Tafeche
Noura Tafeche is a visual artist, onomaturge, and independent researcher whose practice moves across archival methods, laboratory-based processes, video, installation, neologisms and drawing. She graduated in New Media Art from the Brera Academy of fine arts, with a particular focus on net.art, however, her most formative experience has been The Influencers Festival, Barcelona. Her research explores visual culture and its techno-political entanglements, with particular attention to digital militarism, online aesthetics, internet hyper-niches, and non-Anglophone meme cultures. She also examines the use of synthetic images and speculative renderings in institutional neo-propaganda strategies. Her research project The Politics of Rendering was awarded the Italian Council 2025-2026 grant by the Italian Ministry of Culture.She has exhibited, lectured, and led laboratories at Aksioma (Ljubljana), Medialab Matadero (Madrid), transmediale (Berlin), Disruption Network Lab (Berlin), Fotomuseum Winterthur (Winterthur), Impakt (Utrecht), Foto Colectania (Barcelona), C/O Berlin (Berlin), Design Museum (Helsinki), Tainan Art Museum (Tainan), Tomorrow Maybe (Hong Kong), TheWrong Biennale (internet), Aarhus Kunsthal (Aarhus), Triennale Milano (Milano), Pirelli Hangar Bicocca (Milano), Mattatoio (Roma), Dutch Art Institute (Arnhem), Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam), and the European Union Representative Centre (Al Quds, Palestine).
- Valerie Tameu
Valerie Tameu is an Italian Cameroonian artist and performer. They have gained experience working with various artists from the Italian and the international scene. They create and pursue their artistic projects in various contexts and realities, ranging from performance to installations and research projects, characterised by a hybrid and explorative approach. Their research focuses on the relationship between memory and imagination, while their artistic practice creatively blends corporeality, ideas, theories, and hallucinations.
Jury
Zasha Colah
Zasha Colah is a curator interested in cultural sovereignty and cultural transference under repression. She is lecturer in Curatorial Studies at Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan (since 2018). Artistic codirector of Ar/Ge Kunst (with Francesca Verga; Bozen-Bolzano, Italy; since 2023), where she codevelops a program centered around a series of artistic questions that each time forge a new working group of artists and practitioners. She is a member of Archive, a decentralized community of practice (Berlin; Dakar, Senegal; Milan, Italy; since 2020), where she co-curated exhibitions, study days, and the serial program on moving multitudes, Choreopoethics. She was co-founder of the Clark House Initiative (Mumbai, 2010-2022). She co-curated the third Pune Biennale with Luca Cerizza, Habit-co-Habit (2017), and was part of the curatorial team led by Marco Scotini of the second Yinchuan Biennale, Starting from the Desert. Ecologies on the Edge (2018). She is curator of the 13th Berlin Biennale to open in 2025. She is based in Turin (since 2017).
François Piron
François Piron is an exhibition curator, art critic, teacher and publisher with the imprint Paraguay, Paris (www.paraguaypress.com). He is currently a curator at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. His curatorial work focuses in particular on the relationship between art and literature, and also between art, history and social sciences, with a view to making marginalized areas of culture visible, and a political aim of questioning the role of institutions. Among his recent projects, he produced in 2021 the exhibition Absalon Absalon at the IVAM in Valencia and at the Capc in Bordeaux, as well as the exhibition Sarah Maldoror : cinéma tricontinental at the Palais de Tokyo (touring in Lisbon in 2022, in Luanda in 2023 and at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, USA in 2024). In 2022, he published a book of interviews with the philosopher Sylvère Lotringer, founder of the publishing house Semiotext(e) in New York, who passed away in 2021. In 2023 he curated Exposed, a vast exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo on the impact of the AIDS epidemic on art practices, inspired by Elisabeth Lebovici’s book Ce que le sida m’a fait.
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