feminist bioInstead of a bio: Following the decolonial feminist scholar Paola Bacchetta, who has written about the importance of situating oneself before beginning to write or talk (see http://www.internationaleonline.org/dialogues/11_who_is_speaking),
Thank you to Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez for her text “Washing whiteness in art institutions” which inspired me to write a feminist biography. I will briefly situate myself: I am a white, born in Poggibonsi, a town in the mid of the Chianty shire in Tuscany, Italy in a mixed working- and middle-class family. Since I was a child, I had an innate admiration for the art and culture that would surround me in public squares, buildings, but also museums. My mum told me I was 4 when I first expressed admiration for a painting, the "Blue House" by Marc Chagall, which I saw in a temporary show in Pisa, on a rainy Sunday evening of my childhood. Whether that has been a treshhold for a new understanding, I don't know, but I like to think something changed since I began exploring the feelings that encountering and producing art wpould give me. I left Italy as soon as I could after the studies cause my family couldn't pay me going to University abroad. I felt I was thinking more than the space I had. Since then, I have never really stopped travelling and being immersed in art and artistic practice. I am able-bodied, even though I experienced being on a wheel-chair after a bike accindent and that experience changed my understading of life priorities. I have two university degrees in contemporary art and history of exhibitions and museology. A few years ago, I began a PhD research on the ethics of curating and researching in art institutions, which is still undergoing and which I hope to conclude soon (even though it evolves orgamnically as times change). I constantly receive comments about my hand gestures when I am talking aother languages, and about my Italian accent noticeable in any of the foreign languages I speak. Why should I speak like a British or an American to be more intellegible? Isn't it also a form of colonization and denial of other identities, stories, histories, sounds, voices among others? I don't identify myself with a national identity but I feel close and recognized by communities of people that believe in the agency of people and in the power of revolutionary thoughts (and actions). -Irene Campolmi ---- If you want a work biography, this is it: Over the past ten years, I have worked as a curator and a researcher both independently and for art institutions, curating large-scale exhibitions, conferences and public programs. In 2019, I will curate a major exhibition of Jesper Just’s works at MAAT Museum Art Architecture and Technology, Lisbon and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen. I will also co-curate Kris Lemsalu’s exhibition in the 58th Venice Biennial Estonian Pavilion together with Andrew Berardini, Sarah Lucas and Tamara Luuk. In 2018, I have curated two collective shows: “Re-Routing Nature” at SixtyEight Art Institute (Copenhagen) which looked at the notion of ecology in a world increasingly ruled by technology; and “#whatif” at Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), which reflected on radical socio-political projects of our contemporary society. I have curated two editions of the Code Art Fair artistic program: “Art Reacts” (2017), which opened a discussion on how artistic and curatorial practice reacts to socio-political events proposing new ways to look at and experience the world; and "Performing Identities" (2108) that reflects on the body as a territory to define political identity. I am also completing a PhD on contemporary curatorial practice at the University of Aarhus with a thesis that explores the entanglement between ethics and research in curating. I have co-organised and coordinated the international symposium “Between the DISCURSIVE and the IMMERSIVE” at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Denmark). I have worked as a researcher for the Max Planck Institute- Kunsthistorisches Institute in Florence, and as a curator for the Italian Embassy in Copenhagen and as assistant curator at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. I am part of some research networks with universities and museums including the Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin and the Frie Universitet (Germany). I have collaborated with the Danish Pavilion at the 57th La Biennale di Venezia as a translator. I am based in Copenhagen when I am not somewhere else travelling. |
"Between the DISCURSIVE and the IMMERSIVE: A Symposium on research in the 21st Century Art Museums", Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 3-4 December 2015. Ph: Klaus Holsting.
The image above is extracted by Basim Magdy's solo show "M.A.G.N.E.T." at MAAT, Museum Art Architecture and Technology in Lisbon (2019), which I co-curated with Inês Grosso. |
InterestsArt Curating & Exhibitions History
Performance Artistic practices reflecting on ecology and climate change Gender studies Curatorial Ethics Queerism Postcolonialism |
HobbiesYoga
Running (Danish weather permitted!) Travelling ....and travelling even more. Piano |