’89 domande a Milovan Farronato – Art Curator & Art Critic

If you had to describe your curatorial approach as a choreography, what is the movement you repeat most often? The arabesque. I learned it through Cristodoulos Panayiotou, who often brought dance into our conversations and collaborations, starting with Dying on Stage, a performative lecture whose very early stages I had the pleasure of accompanying, at the beginning of what later became a long and evolving project. I like the arabesque because it is a gesture of precarious balance: one part of the body rises while another bends, as if the movement could turn into a fall at any moment. Curating, to me, often feels like that — a delicate imbalance that somehow manages to keep its center.

What word or concept do you feel represents you best at this moment in your life? I would give you both a word and a concept. Both come from Epicurus. The word would be aponia, something I invoke, something I would like to keep flying lightly above me. Words should fly and not become dogmas.

The concept, instead, would be ataraxia, a state of inner detachment, a calm distance from the noise of the world. At this moment in my life I feel quite close to that condition: not exactly serenity, not exactly boredom, but a quiet suspension between the two.

Is there something you’ve stopped believing about the role of the curator in recent years? Over the years I have probably stopped believing that curating is a profession with a clearly defined protocol. It doesn’t really have a stable structure, a fixed method, or even a clear boundary between work and life. In many ways this is its strength: it is multilayered, open-ended, and constantly shifting. You can always turn the page and start again.

At the same time, the absence of a shared professional framework can also be a limitation. Perhaps I feel this even more because I have often preferred to work in independent or unconventional contexts, which has kept me at some distance from institutional forms of curatorial practice.

When you build an exhibition, do you feel more like a director, an editor, or an intruder? Probably a director first. One of the exhibitions I curated early in my career in London was called Final Cut, and I conceived it explicitly as a cinematic experience: the exhibition unfolded through sections like a script, casting, the set, and finally the projection.

More recently my interest has also moved toward theatre within the context of contemporary art. In particular I collaborated with Paolina Olowska who introduce me to Grotowski’s idea of “poor theatre”. So the director is probably the role that comes most naturally to me when I imagine an exhibition. But after that first stage I try to become an intruder — the first spectator entering the space, almost like someone stepping into a crime scene, noticing unexpected details and letting the exhibition reveal itself. And it is only then that the editor appears, when I start adjusting, cutting, and rearranging the rhythm of the whole.

How much space do you leave for chance when you curate a project? I like to dance with chance. Many of my projects have played with systems that invite contingency — even something like the logic of reading tarot cards as a narrative structure to arrange works in an exhibition. I enjoy bringing chance to the table and letting it interfere with the process.

At the same time I am a Capricorn, so control is also part of my nature.

Most of the architecture of a project — whether it is a book, an exhibition, or a talk — is carefully thought through. I would say perhaps 80 percent is planned. The remaining 20 percent is the space I deliberately leave open, where an unexpected idea, a mistake, or even a failure can suddenly redirect the project. I also like artists who are willing to dance with chance. My role is usually to keep the train on the tracks, while allowing those moments of deviation to happen.

Is there an artist you love but would never work with? I usually work with artists I admire. Curating, for me, means believing in the work and feeling that I might be able to contribute something meaningful to it. However, there are occasions when the difficulty is not artistic but relational.

Years ago I thought about bringing James Coleman back to Milan with a major project. Italy had been an important place for him in the 1970s, when he left Ireland during the years of political conflict and spent time here, encountering visual cultures such as the fotoromanzo, which later resonated in his work. The project itself interested me a lot. But  I realised soon that I would probably feel too much in awe to sustain a productive collaboration.

Something similar has happened when I met Marina Abramović. I deeply admire her work, but I never felt the desire to collaborate. In both cases I think the limit is mine: sometimes certain personalities simply put me in a position of excessive reverence that simply become unproductive.

And one you would love to collaborate with? I have already fulfilled many of the desires. However, there are collaborations that I feel the need to return to over time. One of them is with Katharina Fritsch. We have worked together on several occasions, and I often feel the desire to collaborate with her again at regular intervals — almost like a recurring chapter in my curatorial life. In fact, I am currently planning a new project with her.

Does the curator today have too much power or too little risk? I think the power once attributed to curators has already been widely questioned and, in many ways, reduced — which is probably a healthy development. The figure of the “curator-star” that dominated certain moments in the past feels less central today. If anything, the issue now might be risk. Not necessarily because curators are less courageous, but because the cultural and institutional environment has become more attentive and more cautious. Many decisions today require a deeper awareness of context, representation, and responsibility. As a result, one sometimes thinks twice before making a bold gesture. In that sense, a certain loss of spontaneity may have occurred. But I would still consider it a price worth paying for a more conscious and balanced cultural landscape.

Who was the first artist who truly struck you in your career? Looking back now, I would probably say Marc Camille Chaimowicz. At the beginning of my career his work had a profound impact on me because it allowed me to imagine art as a space one could enter and inhabit. His installations were environments rather than objects — carefully composed interiors where painting, furniture, textiles, and atmosphere merged into something intimate and theatrical. There was a sense of calmness, romantic languor, and attention to craft and domestic space that I found deeply compelling.

I later had the opportunity to work with him directly. One of my early curatorial projects with a substantial budget took place at the Galleria Civica di Modena under the direction of Angela Vettese. An entire floor of the museum was dedicated to the reenactment of his installation Enough Tyranny, which confirmed the strong impression his work had already made on me.

How do you choose the artists you work with? More and more, I feel that I prefer to be chosen. Once you develop a curatorial approach that is quite specific, it becomes visible to others, and artists may approach you because they feel that your perspective could resonate with their work. Especially as an independent curator, the relationship is often reciprocal rather than unilateral. Many collaborations begin through encounters or conversations that gradually turn into a form of complicity. I like that word: complicity. Not necessarily friendship, but the feeling of becoming temporary companions on a journey. For instance, much of my work throughout 2025 was shaped by a series of collaborations with the painter Iva Lulashi. Our encounter happened almost by chance and was followed by a studio visit, which then led to a number of projects that punctuated that year.

What bores you the most about the contemporary art system today? I wouldn’t necessarily describe boredom as something negative. I actually coexist with boredom quite productively, it can even be a constructive state of mind. So in a way, both everything and nothing.

What is your relationship with the audience of your exhibitions? Are you more interested in feedback or in the individual experience of the work? When I write a text, my primary reader is usually the artist.  When I curate an exhibition,, the situation changes. Then I think very much about the public, the visitor who enters the space, looks around, moves through the exhibition, and gradually understands its logic. In a previous answer you mentioned the figure of the “intruder”; in a way I try to identify with that visitor and imagine how the exhibition will reveal itself to them. I prefer that the exhibition can be understood without relying too heavily on texts or captions. Sometimes the experience is meant to be individual.

For example, when I transformed the Italian Pavilion into a labyrinth, each visitor could follow their own path and construct a personal experience. In other situations the experience becomes collective, almost ritualistic. I remember in particular a project I curated in 2017 at The Breeder gallery in Athens, in the neighbourhood of Metaxourgeio, titled Si Sedes Non Is, a phrase derived from the inscription on the Alchemical Door in Rome. The exhibition unfolded almost like a ritual environment, where the presence of the audience activated the space and its performative elements.

If you could curate an “impossible” exhibition, with living, dead, or imaginary artists, what would be the first one you would invite? Perhaps I would begin with a project I curated in 2013 with Roberto Cuoghi titled Arimortis. The exhibition revolved around the idea of excess — artists whose work seemed unable to remain within the boundaries of proportion or measure. For that project we worked with materials from the Viafarini archive in Milan, selecting examples that embodied a certain sense of artistic hypertrophy. If I were to imagine an impossible exhibition, I would extend that idea much further. I would expand the field beyond contemporary art and invite figures that embody different forms of excess or disproportion. Someone like Saint Catherine of Siena, for instance, whose intense spiritual life and extraordinary body of letters represent a kind of existential excess. Perhaps the exhibition itself could take place in a location that already embodies this idea of excess like the Winchester Mystery House in California, with its endless corridors, doors opening onto nothing, and staircases leading nowhere. In such a setting, the exhibition could become a reflection on the many forms that excess, obsession, and disproportion can take across history, spirituality, and art.

If you were a character of a movie which one would you be? If you had asked Chiara Fumai, I am quite certain she would have answered immediately: The Exorcist. For her, art was something close to possession, both the trauma itself and the possibility of exorcising that trauma. It had to be violent, confrontational, almost dangerous. In that sense she would probably have identified with the possessed figure. I do not have that kind of certainty, so I might give you three answers instead. Perhaps the Stalker in Tarkovsky’s film Stalker: someone who guides others through a mysterious territory without ever fully controlling what will happen there. Maybe Madame D from The Grand Budapest Hotel, a character who appears briefly but leaves behind an entire labyrinth of consequences. Or perhaps Guido in Fellini’s 8½: someone who constructs worlds while constantly questioning them.

Since it is one of the few elements that cannot be contaminated by artificial intelligence, do you think the real life of the artist will return to the center of the stage, becoming itself the true work of art? In a way, I feel I have already answered this through some of the artists I mentioned earlier. Figures like Roberto Cuoghi or Chiara Fumai show how inseparable art and life can become. So in a sense I would say that the life of the artist has always been at the center. Perhaps what will change is simply our awareness of it.

What’s your best project? Probably Volcano Extravaganza, a festival of contemporary art and performance that I curated and often co-curated on the volcanic island of Stromboli. It was conceived as a temporary, time-based exhibition unfolding in an unusual landscape. In the earliest editions the programme stretched over several weeks, but over time I realised that concentrating the events within a few days — or at most a week — created a much stronger intensity and allowed the energy of the festival to build more effectively. What made the project unique was its dialogue with the island itself: the volcano, the wind, the sea, the local community, and the visitors who arrive there every summer. Stromboli carries an extraordinary accumulation of cultural references, from mythology to cinema, from Homeric landscapes to films by Rossellini and Antonioni. It is a place where nature, narrative, and imagination constantly overlap. For me, that festival became an inexhaustible source of inspiration, and perhaps the project where I felt most at ease.

The most appreciated one? Perhaps, in the end, it might still be Volcano Extravaganza. Over the years it received a great deal of attention, including recognition from the international press, and its different editions kept renewing the project while maintaining a clear identity. For instance, one edition was listed among the ten best exhibitions of 2015 by Artforum, in a text by Chus Martínez. It took some time for the format to be fully understood, but eventually it became widely appreciated.

Another project that received enormous visibility was the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. That one was perhaps more polarising: some people loved it, while others criticised what they perceived as a strong curatorial gesture. In reality, the labyrinth structure of the exhibition was developed together with the artists themselves — Liliana Moro and Enrico David — as a way of creating the spatial conditions their works required, including the one of Chiara Fumai.

What is your project that you are most attached to? Why? It is Mycorial Theatre, which I developed together with Paolina Olowska. It unfolded across several editions and, in a way, still feels unfinished, as if it continues to reverberate over time. The project took place partly in a haunted house in a small sanatorium village near Kraków, where artists and participants gathered to explore connections between art, theatre and everyday life. It drew inspiration from the mycelial structures of fungi — invisible networks growing underground — and from the ideas of Jerzy Grotowski and his notion of “poor theatre.” What fascinated me about Mycorial Theatre was precisely its openness: there were indications and shared rituals, but no rigid objectives. Art and life were constantly blending together. People cooked, walked in the forest searching for mushrooms, performed, talked, and inhabited the space collectively. For this reason the project remains very meaningful to me. It was mysterious, somewhat dysfunctional, but also deeply alive. And perhaps this is why it continues to echo in my memory and in my thinking: not as a finished exhibition, but as an organism that keeps growing.

Can you tell us an anecdote behind one of your projects? Since I have just mentioned Mycorial Theatre, an anecdote connected to that project comes naturally to mind. During the second edition, Chiara Fumai decided to perform what she called a Chaos Mass. It was an invocation meant to contribute to the symbolic reawakening of the abandoned house. No one was allowed to film or photograph the ritual itself. Only the stage had been documented beforehand. We were all present, witnessing the performance in silence. When the invocation ended, something curious happened: a small black cat suddenly entered the house and stayed with us for the entire night. The next morning it disappeared just as mysteriously as it had arrived. Many of us felt that the animal had somehow embodied the spirit that had just been invoked. Thinking back, similar strange coincidences often seemed to accompany Chiara’s work. Something comparable happened years earlier during the first edition of Volcano Extravaganza. That night she performed a piece in which she channeled Rosa Luxemburg through the voice of Harry Houdini. While the performance was unfolding, the volcano erupted more violently than usual, throwing what locals call a “bomb” — a large incandescent rock — down the slope of the mountain, igniting a small fire that had to be extinguished the following day. Of course these events can easily be explained as coincidences. But looking back, the projects involving Chiara often seemed accompanied by moments that felt unusually charged, as if the boundary between performance and reality had briefly become thinner.

Can you tell us something about you that nobody knows or very few people know? This much is uncertain.

Do you think Hegel was right to put music as art at an higher level, or do you think the figurative arts, especially at an emotional level, are on the same level? Perhaps mysticism offers a more interesting perspective than philosophy in this case. If we think of Hildegard of Bingen, the medieval mystic, composer, herbalist and visionary, music was indeed the most powerful way to connect with what she called viriditas — the vital, green energy that flows through nature and the cosmos. For Hildegard, music and chant were not simply artistic forms but ways of attuning the human body and spirit to that universal vitality. In this sense, one could almost understand why someone like Hegel might have considered music a higher art.

Interestingly, this idea has recently resurfaced in contemporary art. The Holy See Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist together with Ben Vinkers and developed in dialogue with Soundwalk Collective, was conceived precisely as a listening experience in the mystical garden of the Discalced Carmelite monastery. The project invites visitors to reconnect with sound as a form of spiritual and sensory awareness, almost echoing Hildegard’s intuition.

That said, I personally do not feel the need to establish a hierarchy among the arts. Visual art, too, has an extraordinary capacity to reach emotional and spiritual levels of experience. Perhaps the difference lies less in hierarchy than in frequency: different arts resonate with us through different channels, but they can reach equally profound intensities.

Can you give us a definition of art? I am not particularly inclined to give definitions. But if art had to be defined through an image, perhaps I would borrow a haiku by Matsuo Bashō:

“Old pond —

a frog jumps in,

the sound of water”.

Art might be exactly that moment: something very small that suddenly opens a perception of depth.

Your favorite style icons? Simone Weil in the deeper sense of a life shaped by radical coherence. She was an unpredictable mind who constantly questioned everything — philosophy, politics, religion — and who even chose to work as a factory labourer in order to experience reality directly. What fascinates me about her is the capacity to move across different registers of existence, as if style were not only a matter of appearance, but also an ethical and intellectual transformation.

What’s your best talent? My best talent might be recognising and supporting other people’s talent. I should mention Sagg Napoli — I might be slightly biased, as she jokingly calls me her “mother” — but I find her practice and presence remarkable. Her work moves across different identities and registers: from a very visceral Neapolitan energy to the discipline of an athlete, to the performative intelligence of an artist acting in different contexts, including fashion. In that sense, I feel her work resonates with a lineage of Italian artists I deeply admire, such as Roberto Cuoghi and Chiara Fumai, for whom identity is never fixed but constantly reinvented.

Perhaps, in the end, it is also about reading between the lines.

What is your motto? No problems, just solutions.

When, in your opinion, can you define a person as an artist? Definitions are always a bit problematic. But the artists I love most are those who are able to generate epiphanies — small or large ones. Moments in which something suddenly reveals itself and you begin to see the world, reality, a relationship, even an ordinary day in a different way.

An artist, for me, is someone who can produce that shift. It can be something very simple: an image, a gesture, a situation that allows you to understand something differently, sometimes even to resolve a small personal enigma. It does not always have to be about life and death, destiny or the meaning of existence. Sometimes it is simply a change in perception — but a real one.

The artists I admire most are precisely those who are capable of creating these moments of revelation — epiphanies, recognitions, sudden insights. There are many ways to name them, but they all point to the same experience.

Who do you think is the best artist right now? I work with many artists and have been influenced by many of them in different ways, so choosing one would feel wrong. What I can perhaps say instead is which artwork currently fascinates me the most.

In different moments of my life I might have answered differently. For a long time, for instance, I would probably have mentioned the work of Katharina Fritsch. Her sculptures have always impressed me for their quality as simulacra — images that appear with an almost iconic clarity and remain fixed in the mind. Works such as her Elephant or the Rat King have this extraordinary ability to generate a kind of epiphany: something that is at once simple, direct and strangely unsettling.

Right now, however, the work that intrigues me the most is Go No Go by Goshka Macuga, the large rocket installed on the island of San Giacomo in the Venetian lagoon. It is a powerful simulacrum. On one level it is clearly a rocket ready for launch, but at the same time it is also a question — whether to go or not to go. It speaks about ambition, conquest, colonial histories, technological desire, but also about the uncertainty of the present moment. Seen from the water, from the island itself, from a passing boat, or even from above when arriving or departing by plane from the nearby airport, its presence is both ambiguous and imposing. It functions as a warning, a message, perhaps a point of departure, perhaps an arrival. It does not resolve anything — but it generates a question, and that for me is often what the most memorable works of art do.

If you were not in your profession what work would you have wanted to do? This is a question I have been asked several times, and each time I have given a different answer ,which probably means none of them was entirely true.

The first time I remember answering that I would have liked to be a contortionist, which was obviously a bit of a joke. Another time I said I might have become a fashion designer. That answer was actually more thought through. But today I would probably say something different again. I think I might devote myself to the study of animals and plants — perhaps something close to zoology or botany — but in a very practical way. Not as an academic discipline, and not necessarily as an environmental mission, but more as a form of direct engagement with the living world. I could imagine myself taking care of a garden, or running a small shelter for animals, learning through daily experience rather than through books. In a way, it would still be a form of observation and attention — just applied to a different kind of life.

Do you think human life has meaning? I WANT TO BELIEVE. Incidentally, this was also the title of one of my early group shows which I curated in 2007 at Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich, with artists including Runa Islam, Roberto Cuoghi, Danh Vo, Mircea Cantor, Katharina Fritsch, Sterling Ruby and Marijn van Kreij.

What do you think people say about you? I suppose I don’t go unnoticed!

Blur or Oasis? Blur, less stadium, more art school

Can you tell us when you think a person is cool and when they are not cool? I remember once accidentally spilling a glass of red wine on the shirt of a boyfriend while I was gesticulating, as I often do. He simply kept talking, took off the shirt without making any drama, and carried on with the conversation as if nothing had happened.

That kind of nonchalance — the ability to minimise a small disaster — feels very cool to me.

This makes me think of another moment that illustrates the same idea even better, and that also allows me to remember a dear friend and great artist Thomas Zipp, who passed away recently. We were in Stromboli. We had hiked up to the top of the volcano to witness a performance by Mathilde Rosier. When we came down, the rental place where we had left our shoes — the shop where you are required to rent the equipment to climb the volcano — was already closed. Our shoes were locked inside, so we had to walk barefoot. At some point our friend, the curator Diana Campbell, cut her foot on a piece of glass. With the help of Thomas Zipp, they improvised a solution: using a piece of cardboard from the pizza box we had just finished — a very good pizza — they fashioned a kind of makeshift shoe so she could continue the night and even make it all the way to the nightclub. That, to me, is also very cool.

If you had to tell a person to fuck off, who would you choose? And why? I would probably choose Sylvia Kouvali but only because she is a dear friend.

I doubt we would ever actually end up in a real confrontation, but if such a moment ever happened, I imagine it could lead to a very interesting exchange. Sylvia is quite opinionated and has a strong personality, so a polemical clash with her might reveal unexpected perspectives. That said, I honestly don’t think it will ever happen. But you never know.

If you could choose which historical era to live in, which would you choose? Japan, Edo period

If you could spend a day with an historical figure who would you choose? Yukio Mishima

What is the thing you like the most about Italy?  The landscapes, and their proximity. I love how diverse they are, and how easily you can move from one to another — mountains, islands, countryside, cities — often within a relatively short distance. That sense of variety within such proximity is something quite special.

And one you don’t like? Italy often ends up on the wrong side of history. Even now.

How has living in Italy influenced your creative process? Living in Italy means being constantly surrounded by layers of culture. Not only in the obvious sense of art history and museums, but also in the way art has been narrated through literature, cinema, and other forms of storytelling. In that sense it is certainly a privileged context for someone working in the arts. At the same time, I did not grow up in a major cultural center. I come from a small town in the province of Piacenza, where contemporary art was not really present. Yet creativity was everywhere in other forms: local theatre, small rituals, popular festivities. I still remember the ritual of “burning the old woman” during Carnevale, when a large papier-mâché effigy would be set on fire in the village square. Looking back, that moment had a certain raw theatricality. The figure of the old woman echoed the Befana, the witch associated with the Epiphany. Perhaps my first encounter with the idea of a simulacrum — and with the possibility that something symbolic could suddenly reveal a deeper meaning — happened there. In a way, it was already a small form of epiphany.

Do you think it would be correct to create a place where man can live in the state of nature, making him free from a choice of social belonging that is instead taken for granted? I once tried to answer this question through a project rather than a theory. In 2016, on the island of Stromboli, I co-curated an edition of the festival titled I Will Go Where I Don’t Belong together with the artist Camille Henrot.  

The idea was to place at the center a kind of contemporary Robinson Crusoe: someone who confronts distance, isolation, and the possibility of rebuilding a shelter, what the architect Yona Friedman described as a maison absolue, a house imagined outside fixed structures and social prescriptions.

It was about the experience of leaving the structures that define us, entering a space of uncertainty, and then eventually searching again for contact and community.

Artists such as Anna Boghiguian, David Horvitz, Rachel Rose, Mike Nelson and Maria Loboda, Yona Friedman of curse contributed to that constellation of reflections.  

So rather than imagining a pure “state of nature,” the project suggested something slightly different: the freedom to move between belonging and not belonging, between solitude and encounter. For me, that oscillation is probably the closest thing to freedom.

What’s the topic you are most expert in? Honestly, none. I don’t think I am an expert in anything. I tend to develop many temporary interests rather than a single stable field of expertise. Even my memory works in a rather lacustrine way: there is always a light fog over the water, things appear in the distance but never completely sharp. Fragments remain, ideas re-emerge, associations surface unexpectedly. Sometimes I remember something without remembering exactly where it came from, whether I read it somewhere or simply imagined it.

Over time I have learned to live quite comfortably within this atmosphere. I am even a little attached to it.

Do you have a ritual or a habit that helps you work better? Yes. Walking. I walk while I’m on the phone, I walk while thinking, and very often I even dictate my texts while walking. Only at a later stage do I sit down to revise them. Whenever possible, I also prefer meetings that involve moving: studio visits obviously require a studio, but if I simply need to meet an artist, I would rather do it while walking in a park or while visiting an exhibition together. I actually dislike video calls. When I have to do them, I often keep the camera off so I can move around the house. Staying still makes it harder for me to think. Walking helps me connect ideas. It is almost a form of thinking.

What is your favorite moment of the day and why? It depends on what the day is meant for. Certain activities belong naturally to specific moments. But if I have to choose one moment in absolute terms, I would say dawn. I have rediscovered it recently. I wake up very early because I live with a cat who has very strong early-morning needs, and over time I adapted to her rhythm.

Now I actually enjoy this strange ritual: waking up before sunrise, doing a few things in complete silence, and sometimes even falling asleep again before starting the day once more. That first interval — usually between five and six thirty — is a very special time. Nobody calls, nobody writes, the world is still quiet. I can make coffee and concentrate completely. It is often when I edit texts or finish writing something.

In a way, that moment allows me to remove the weight of the day before the day even begins. It clears my mind and makes the rest of the day lighter and more creative.

Favorite movies? The Holy Mountain (1973) by Alejandro Jodorowsky, for its visionary, mystical and symbolic imagery that turns cinema almost into a ritual. Also Russian Ark (2002) by Alexander Sokurov, a remarkable single-take journey through the Winter Palace and the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. And finally Stalker (1979) by Andrei Tarkovsky, for the philosophical and contemplative way it reflects on desire, faith and the search for meaning.

Favorite directors? Kenneth Anger. I love all his films, but I am particularly attracted to Rabbit’s Moon.

Favorite songs? Crazy in Love

Favorite bands? The Cranberries. Because I first listened to them when I lived in Ireland and I remained attached to their music ever since, also deeply saddened when Dolores O’Riordan passed away.

A famous band you don’t like? U2.

Favorite books? The ones I’m reading now: On Mysticism: The Experience of Ecstasis by Simon Critchley, Psychic Self-Defence by Dion Fortune, and Demonologia rivoluzionaria, whose authorship remains deliberately unclear.

Favorite authors?  Clarice Lispector, for the intensity and almost mystical quality of her introspection.

Favorite artworks? I believe I already answered this earlier mentioning GO NO GO. But since several questions have passed, another work that comes to mind is Nova Popularna, a collaboration between Paulina Olowska and Lucy McKenzie, which I find particularly inspiring for the way it reimagines cultural history through collaboration and fiction.

If you can choose 5 celebrities to have party with who they would be? I would probably not organize a proper party but an after-party, which I have always preferred. Something that starts late, after everything else is finished. In that kind of situation I would invite people who could keep the night alive in different ways: Grace Jones for her magnetic energy, Arca for the unpredictability, Michèle Lamy for her almost shamanic presence, A$AP Rocky for the effortless cool, and the South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook, who I imagine observing everything with a quiet, elegant sense of mischief.

Do you feel envy for anyone? If so, for whom? Perhaps the real question is: which virtue stands opposite to envy? In medieval thought it would be charity. I suspect I live somewhere between the two.

The material good you most desire and envy? Flesh. Like the angels in the last spheres of Dante’s Paradiso, who seem to mourn the absence of a body, I sometimes feel a similar longing. I can imagine its force, even envy it, and yet I remain strangely detached from it.

The quality you would like to have and don’t have? Patience.

Is there an apparently insignificant experience that had a big impact on your career? I realize i mostly remember what didn’t work.

There are more and more models who do not respond to the “classic” aesthetic canons, do you think that brands really try to change the social dynamics or do you think they are choices dictated by marketing reasons to exploit the politically correct?  Probably more the second than the first. I suspect that, very often, it is mainly a marketing strategy. At the same time, I have to admit that even when I try to align myself with what I intellectually believe is right, my instincts are probably still shaped by older aesthetic models

Which brands would you like to collaborate with to curate a fashion exhibition? Interestingly, I might be able to answer this question quite soon. These days I am preparing a proposal for an artistic director and the brand he currently interprets, for a possible collaboration in an important Italian museum, around the legacy of an artist whose work I closely follow. I prefer not to anticipate anything yet, but if the project comes together it should become public within the next year. Let’s say this answer might reveal itself sooner than expected.

If you had the possibility to remove social networks from the world, would you delete them? No, I wouldn’t delete them. Even though in the past I critically supported, also from a curatorial perspective, a project of digital dissent called Swinging Club by Matteo Domenichetti. The idea was simple and quite radical: people were invited to exchange their social media profiles with friends and acquaintances, so that the system of profiling would become unreliable—like a postman trying to deliver letters to constantly changing addresses. I found the project very stimulating because it exposed both the limits and the mechanisms of social networks. So yes, they should be questioned, sometimes even subverted, but not erased.

What do you think about influencers? I’m fine with the category. It’s simply a new cultural and social role that has emerged in our time. Of course, some of them I find rather grotesque, while with others I’m actually happy to engage. Like many contemporary phenomena, it really depends on how it is embodied.

If you were an animal which one would you like to be? An octopus. I already gave this answer in another interview and I still feel it is the right one. I am fascinated by its tentacular nature, by the fact that I tend to imagine it almost as a feminine creature, perhaps also influenced by Katharina Fritsch’s sculptural representation of it. And then there is its epidermal intelligence — a distributed, sensitive way of perceiving the world. For all these reasons, the octopus still feels like the closest answer. 

What’s your favorite city in the world? Milan. I have been living here steadily for the past three years and I feel surprisingly well. At this stage of my life I travel less than before, and Milan offers a good balance: an active social life, many people passing through, and enough energy without being overwhelming. It may not be the most exotic answer, but for now it feels like the right city for me. That said, recently I have also spent time working in Beijing and I was intrigued by the experience. If not Milan, I could imagine exploring life in a Chinese city — perhaps one with a slightly slower rhythm and a landscape that invites walking.

Do you have any phobias? Not really. There are things that make me slightly uncomfortable: snakes, for example , although I’m also strangely fascinated by them. I don’t particularly like very enclosed spaces, but I take elevators without problems. Large crowds can make me uneasy as well, yet if something is worth it I still go — for instance to performances at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus beneath the Acropolis in Athens. I also experience a bit of vertigo at heights, but even that doesn’t stop me from hiking in the mountains, sometimes along quite dramatic cliffs.

Favorite fashion brand? Gucci. Considering the history of its recent — and also less recent — artistic directions.

How important is it for you to be rich from 1 to 10? 8

And fame? 8

How important are fame and money to impress a partner? Not relevant, as I am currently not interested in having a partner.

And what about beauty? 8

And intelligence? 8

The most precious material thing you own? The most precious thing I have is probably my cat, but that is neither a material nor an object. If the question refers instead to possessions, I don’t own diamonds, precious stones, or rare earths. In that sense, the most valuable thing I own is a large painting by Leidy Churchman. Its materials are quite simple: oil paint on canvas. 

What do you usually drink at the bar? Dry Martini with Vodka an olive 

An advice you can give to someone that want to do your job?Developer your own style 

What would you title a book about your career? The Art of Manipulation and Other Stories

Best party you’ve been to? I have only a few tattoos on my body, very discreet and almost invisible. They actually mark the names of some of the best after-parties I’ve ever attended: Union in London, Frutta e Verdura in Rome, Florida in Rio de Janeiro, and Mamba Negra in São Paulo. A small personal map of nights I didn’t want to forget.

What are the clothes you can’t stand to see on a man and on a woman? Birkenstocks. I would burn them all.

Can you tell us a number from 1 to 89? I like the double seven. And in the Neapolitan smorfia it stands for the little devils, which feels somehow appropriate.

Your ideal holiday? Traveling on a sailboat along a river, stopping from time to time in different unusual places along the way. I once did it on the Nile.

If you could compose the best band in history, who would be in it? Nina Simone would certainly be part of it

If you could compose the best band of today, who would be in it? Some of the people i already invited to the after-party in the previous question

Do you think that if there were no hypothetical partners to impress, human beings would pursue success so spasmodically? Yes, simply less.

What might be an alternative solution to prison for you? The first thing that came to mind is a work by Runa Islam that I showed in the exhibition Lost Cinema Lost. The last piece in the show was a neon sign that looked like an exit sign but actually read EXILE. It made me think about exile as a condition — stepping outside the community for a while rather than being locked inside a prison. I’m not sure it would truly work as a solution, but that was the first association the question triggered.

There are those who argue that the death penalty is a non-penalty, in the sense that at the moment in which the penalty is executed, the subject who should undergo it does not exist anymore because of the penalty itself, consequently involving however an interference in the life of the subjects close to the condemned, who would become at that point the real passive subjects of the case, what do you think about it? When my friend, the artist Chiara Fumai, took her life in 2017, I had to confront the difficult task of accepting that death can sometimes be a personal decision. Working with her legacy forced me to reflect on how complicated the question of agency over life and death really is. For that reason I feel uneasy with arguments suggesting that someone condemned should be denied even the possibility of ending their own life, as if life itself could be imposed as a form of punishment. At the same time, I remain firmly opposed to the death penalty, because I do not believe anyone should have the authority to decide death on behalf of someone else.

If we consider the death as the end of everything, hypothetically the homicide of a subject that for absurdity doesn’t have, and has never had, social relationships of any kind with anybody, neither economic, neither personal, neither juridical, and if he would be killed without inflicting any suffering and without that he could realize it, such homicide should be punished? Leaving aside the motivations of the agent, as well as the need to protect other subjects of a hypothetical society, in case he would be punished, the murderer would suffer the punishment for an action of which no one suffers any consequence, is it correct for you then to assert that death is something that concerns only the living? The question begins with an assumption I don’t necessarily share. I don’t think death is simply the end of everything. For that reason the scenario becomes difficult to accept in the first place.

What do you think about the cancel culture? I find myself more often in favor of it.

Is rock and roll still alive? Rock and roll is not a genre. It’s a form of disobedience.

What do you think about ChatGPT and artificial intelligence? On a practical level, it helps me balance my communication, making it more diplomatic, and sometimes more passively aggressive. On a more speculative level, perhaps one day it might allow us to question voices that do not belong to the present.

Do you think it could be the closest element that points to possible proof of the existence of the divine? This last line cannot be translated.

A question you wish we had asked you but didn’t? What keeps you inspired?

And what answer would you have given yourself? Everyday life. Small things. Even routine

If you could choose a person you know to read this interview, who would it be? The above-mentioned Matteo Domenichetti. As a Sagittarius, his creativity moves freely from one thing to another and then circles back again. He can read an unreasonable number of books at the same time,  sometimes without finishing any of them. So I would like him to read this interview from the first question to the last as a small punishment.