Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo has been committed to contemporary art and culture for twenty-seven years, during which time it has developed an activity open to the public dimension: with the aim of disseminating knowledge of art and educating a wide audience; and it has been interested above all in building a continuous dialogue with artists: based on supporting new generations through their promotion and the production of exhibitions and art works.

The following is the result of a conversation with the foundation's Chief Curator in Turin, Irene Calderoni, on the occasion of Turin's Contemporary Art Week.

I

ALBERTO AGUILAR: Around what thematic axes or realities does your institution, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (FSRR, from now on), structure its exhibition programme? What are your programmatic interests?

IRENE CALDERONI: Our programme focuses on research, both expressive and thematic, emerging on the international contemporary art scene. We work with young and mid-career artists in solo and group exhibitions that accommodate the artistic and cultural evolutions of our time. For example, in recent years we have presented artists who work with digital media and who analyse the impact of new media (CGI, artificial intelligence) not only on artistic language, but more generally on society, relationships and identity-forming processes. I am thinking of the solo exhibitions of Ed Atkins, Ian Cheng, Martine Syms, among others. The exhibition dedicated to Syms was part of a specific initiative dedicated to this theme of ours, the Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media, a programme of commissions and acquisitions carried out in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art to support the creation of innovative works in the fields of video art, film, performance, sound and digital art. As part of this programme, on 3 November we open an exhibition by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, winner of the third commission, who will present a new installation that continues his research into the political dimension of sound.

The interest in digital media does not exclude attention to other emerging trends, such as in recent years the return to pictorial figuration, which, while turning its gaze to art history, also expresses its topicality and urgency by addressing issues such as racial identity, gender identity and power relations. We have dedicated solo exhibitions to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Michael Armitage and, last year, a large group show entitled Stretching the Body, which explored new notions of embodiment through the work of thirteen artists. The exhibition featured Avery Singer, Christina Quarles and Ambera Wellmann. The latter will be the subject of a solo exhibition in 2023.

The thematic group exhibition is a format that we are particularly interested in and that allows us to address the complexities of the present, highlighting ruptures and conflicting definitions of phenomena and processes, rather than offering a single, homogenous view. We are working on a project for spring 2023 that will explore the theme of botany in its historical and contemporary intersections with questions of identity, colonialism and ecology.

II

AA: We can conceive of any exhibition project as a device that will both offer a singular experience to the visitor and attract new audiences. How do you approach these questions? Based on what premises, what processes, what formats?

IC: From an institutional point of view, the relationship between exhibition design and working with the public has always been a priority for us, I would say a question of identity. In recent times, we have made this an explicit theme of our work, placing the question of education at the centre of our curatorial methodology, and asking not how to educate the public for art, but how art can act as an educational tool to reflect and understand contemporary dynamics. This research perspective led us to artists such as Adelita Husni-Bey, Jonas Staal y Alessandra Ferrini, whose work is based on the interrogation of educational practices and the development of new formats of collective learning. Collaborating with them was also a way of forcing acquired internal working models, giving us the opportunity to collaborate actively and horizontally across our departments. This has resulted in a greater integration between the curatorial and educational dimensions, an integration that includes project goals, processes and formats.

A very pertinent example is Jonas Staal's Training for the Future project, the last episode in a large-scale project, entitled Verso, which engaged us in 2021-2022 through a plurality of activities and formats, including exhibitions, workshops, public programmes and digital tools. Training for the Future was the culmination of Verso, and embodied its logic and methodology, bringing together artistic, exhibition, performative and educational dimensions, all characterised by a progressive and inclusive political perspective.

III

AA: Any cultural institution should be accessible and inclusive and have an impact on the city. How can the FSRR's offer in general and the exhibition programme in particular rethink or reimagine relations with different groups and communities in Turin?

IC: I would like to refer here to the previous answer, and in particular to the project I have already mentioned, Verso, because one of its peculiarities was that it was conceived from the target audience, i.e. the audience of the younger generations, girls and boys aged fifteen to twenty-nine. Verso was developed around three research axes on very urgent issues today: the question of the autonomy and fulfilment of the younger generations, their participation in social and political life, and the prevention and problematisation of the "new addictions", a direct effect of the specific dynamics of our societies. The need to relate to and involve this audience (made up in reality of a plurality of communities, identified by age group, origin and educational level) has guided our approach, both in terms of the choice of formats and the register and methods of dialogue. More generally and beyond this project, the FSRR’s activity expresses a particular attention to inclusion issues, through a plurality of tools and offers of educational and engagement activities designed for different audiences.

IV

AA: In what way would you say that FSRR's activity contributes to the building of civil society and the public sphere?

IC: Through the production of research, the provision and dissemination of analytical tools, the creation of opportunities for discussion, debate and training. For us, an exhibition is always a space open to dialogue, a civic space, where perspectives of analysis of contemporary phenomena are proposed, but not with an authoritarian approach. Each visit is an experience, an opportunity for debate that produces language and knowledge and generates a public space within the museum. This is demonstrated by the tool we have chosen for dialogue with our public, cultural mediation, whose function, as opposed to the traditional guided tour, is to favour the encounter between the work and the spectator, guiding, stimulating dialogue and encouraging the expression of individual interpretations. Together, in the exhibition, we like to listen, to take and pass the floor, to put ourselves in the middle, to spark the discourse, to encourage digressions, to listen to opinions, divergences and translations.

V

AA: We are interested to know more about the young Italian artists' scene, could you tell us about it and the work of some of its main exponents?

IC: Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo has always paid great attention to the emerging Italian scene, in particular through the Young Curatorial Residency Programme, active in Italy since 2007 (and since three years ago also in Spain). Every year we invite 3 foreign curators to carry out an in-depth research on the contemporary art system in Italy, which ends with a group exhibition of Italian artists. This project is very important for us because, on the one hand, it allows us to keep up to date with what is happening in our country and, on the other hand, it gives us the opportunity to promote knowledge of our recent artistic production among emerging generations of curators. Above all, each year we are offered a different reading of this scene, elaborated through specific perspectives and interests, which account for the richness and multiplicity of emerging artistic practices. In this sense, it is difficult and reductive to cite just a few names representative of the entire Italian scene; I prefer to mention some particular figures with whom we have collaborated recently, both in the FSRR’s exhibition programme and through support for external initiatives.

I am pleased to mention Ludovica Carbotta, an artist born and trained in Turin and currently living in Barcelona. We have followed her work and her growth over the years, and then dedicated a major solo exhibition to her in 2019, which showed almost in its entirety the long-term project Monowe, which through sculptures, installations and performances weaves a reflection on the relationship between the individual and the urban architectural complex as seen through the lens of a science fiction narrative. That same year, Carbotta presented the project at the Venice Biennale, in the exhibition curated by Ralph Rugoff, creating an installation for the Arsenale that is now part of the Foundation's collection and installed in the San Licerio Sculpture Park.

Still in relation to the Biennale, with this year's edition curated by Cecilia Alemani, I would like to point out the Foundation's support for the work of Giulia Cenci, who has created a monumental installation for the outdoor spaces of the Corderie, a theory of hybrid bodies, mixtures of human, animal and machine, which gives shape to a dystopian, fascinating and perverse symphony.

Another artist whose work we follow with interest is Michele Rizzo, who, thanks to the YCRP project, presented at the FSRR in 2019 his performance HIGHER, a choreographic work that reflects on the dynamics of clubbing rituals between the individual and the collective body. The following year, the FSRR contributed to the production of one of his important new works, REST, a sculptural installation with a performance component with which the artist participated in the Rome Quadrennial in 2020 and which became part of the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection.

The last artist I would like to mention is Alessandra Ferrini, recent winner of the MAXXI Bvlgari Prize, the most important prize for young Italian art. Ferrini is an artist with whom we have collaborated several times in recent years, specifically in 2021 we invited her to conceive a site-specific work within the Memory Matters project, dedicated to the analysis of memory in public space. Having always been interested in the repressed Italian colonial past, Ferrini created a sound piece that takes place inside Valentino Park, bringing to the surface the past and present violence that lurks in the romantic and monumental spaces of the city park.

VI

AA: In addition to FSRR's proposals, what do you recommend we visit during Turin Art Week 2022?

IC: For Turin Art Week, we will offer four different exhibition projects: in addition to the aforementioned Lawrence Abu Hamdan, the group exhibition of works from the Backwards Ahead collection, the solo show by Victor Man and the Present Future - Illy Prize with Diana Policarpo. In the city, of course, you can't miss a visit to the Artissima fair, with a long-awaited new direction by Luigi Fassi. And then there are the numerous exhibitions organised by the city's museums, all of them first-rate: from Olafur Eliasson at Castello di Rivoli to Michal Rovner at Fondazione Merz; from the photographic exhibitions by Lisetta Carmi and Gregory Crewdson at Gallerie d'Italia, to the new site-specific installations of the Pista at Fondazione Agnelli, to the Arthur Jafa exhibition at OGR. In short, a very rich programme for an endless week of contemporary art.

IRENE CALDERONI is Chief Curator at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, where she has worked since 2007. She holds a degree in Media Studies, Semiotics and Sociology from the University of Bologna and in Visual Arts from the IUAV University in Venice. Among the exhibitions she curated Daniela Ortiz (2022); the long-term project Verso (2021-2022); Martine Syms (2021); Space Oddity (2020), Berlinde De Bruyckere. ALETHEIA (2019); Ludovica Carbotta. Monowe (2019); Monster Chetwynd. The Owl with Laser Eyes (2018); Andra Ursuta. Vanilla Isis (2018); Also Statues Die. Conflict and heritage from the ancient world to the modern day (with Museo Egizio and Musei Reali, Turin, 2018); Hiroshi Sugimoto. Le notti bianche (2017); Harun Farocki. Parallel I-IV (2016); Ed Atkins (2016); Sergey Sapozhnikov. Drama Machine. (2016); Adrián Villar Rojas. Rinascimento (2015); Soft Pictures (2013); Deep Feelings. From Antiquity to Now (2013); Press Play. Art and the Information Media (2012); Modernikon. Contemporary Art from Russia (2010); Investigations of a Dog. Works from FACE Collections (2009). She is tutor and teacher of Curatorial Methodology of Campo – Curatorial Course and was teaching assistant at IUAV University in Venice.

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