Caterina Avataneo

Caterina Avataneo is an independent curator based in Turin, Italy. She was awarded the 2017 NEON Curatorial Award by The Neon Foundation and Whitechapel Gallery and her curatorial projects have appeared in institutions, project spaces, and galleries across Europe. From 2018-2021 she was Associate Curator at Arcade in London & Brussels, and Assistant Curator on assigned projects at Serpentine Gallery in London. In 2019, she was Assistant Curator of the Lithuanian Pavilion for the 58th Venice Biennale—winner of the Golden Lion—and since 2020 she has been part of the board for the fellowship programme at Cripta747, as well as curatorial consultant of the New Entries section for emerging galleries at Artissima (both in Turin). Currently, she is also part of the curatorial team of Pompeii Commitment.

Deborah Joyce Holman

Born 1991 in Basel, Switzerland. 2018 BA, Haute Ecole d'Art et Design de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland.

"Multidisciplinary at the core, Deborah Joyce Holman is always on point when it comes to exploring dissidence, illegibility, and the refusal of representation. Recurrent elements such as teeth, kanekalon hair, shadows, or labyrinthine texts unveil an approach towards identity which contrapposes abstract biological information with queer opacity and porousness. With a focus on Blackness, the artist questions the way in which identity is understood and instrumentalized within Western identity politics, and gives space to shapeshifting possibilities to be found in the most obscure sites. Emblematic in this sense is Holman’s interest in the figure of the trickster, working within the framework of the dominant system, but without subscribing to its rules."

Artwork Image: Untitled (in rage), 2021. Sound installation. 20:24. Commissioned by the 7th Athens Biennial, Athens, Greece

Lucia Leuci

Born 1977 in Bisceglie, Italy. Lives and works in Milan, Italy.

"Familiar at first, surreal soon after, the more one observes Lucia Leuci’s work, the creepier it becomes. There is a sense of narrative permeating Leuci’s sculptures and paintings, where the everyday and the lived experience spurt into the fantastic. The domestic is treated with a detached gaze, averting saccharin effects and employing rather cold materials like iron, epoxy resins, or synthetic hairs. The result is a highly symbolic lexicon which dramatically diverts from patriarchal structures. It feels like a child approaching the world: uncontaminated by moral and aesthetic codes, able to allow the horrorous and the beautiful to inhabit the same room."

Artwork Image: L'allevamento intensivo della vacca da latte (Intensive breeding of the dairy cow), 2021. Iron, ceramic, resin, pigment, alabaster powder, soil. 5 1/2 x 8 2/3 x 5 in. Photo by Flavio Pescatori.

Alessandro Di Pietro

Born 1987 in Messina, Italy. Lives and works in Milan, Italy. 2013 MFA, Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan, Italy. 2011 BFA, Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan, Italy

"Alessandro Di Pietro’s work encapsulates an artistic methodology rooted in a cinematographic grammar and practices of appropriation and embodiment. Shards from the future, cryptographs of an ancient past, and considerations on the present, Di Pietro’s artifacts build upon the aesthetics of the archive and the archeological, while resisting categorization. They cease to be works of art and become autonomous fragments of narrative environments and ghostly atmospheres telling about absent characters, be this Paul Thek, vampiresque beings, or sentient architectures. Unveiling their monstrous essence they die, resurrect in new forms, and make you time travel…"

Artwork Image: HOBOBOLO, 2021. Cement, wood, aluminum, pigmented concrete, 3D printed bronze and PLA filament in metal, wood, steel, wax, kerosene and pigmented chalk, iron, acetate, perforated metal sheet. 98 1/2 x 236 1/5 x 47 1/3 in.