Rome, Latium, Italy
Born in Belgrade, Dobrila Denegri lives and works in Italy and Serbia. She graduated from La Sapienza University in Rome and is an art historian specialising in contemporary art. From 2002 to 2008, she was a curator for special projects at MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome. Considering the Museum as a place for producing meaning, she curated the “Art Highlights” lecture & talk program involving artists, curators, museum directors, fashion and product designers, filmmakers, and art writers. This program involved leading figures of the international art world, and it anticipated themes of curating, post-colonialism and global art through focuses on Africa, the Middle East, India, China, and Eastern Europe. Understanding curating as a form of cultural activism, she co-organised “Real Presence” (2001 - 2010), an international platform for emerging generations, involving over 1500 young artists from over 100 academies and universities worldwide, helping her home city, Belgrade, re-establishes artistic exchange and overcomes consequences of the cultural embargo and war of the 90s. 2010, she became the Artistic Director of the Contemporary Art Center in Torun, Poland. There, she has run an interdisciplinary program focusing on the relationship between art, science, and the environment for five years. She curated exhibitions about performance (Marina Abramović, “Theatre of Life”), agency and social engagement (Alfredo Jaar, Thomas Bayrle, Gustav Metzger, Michal Rovner, “Arena”), and ambient-related interventions (Ernesto Neto, Massimo Bartolini, Tomas Saraceno, Victoria Vesna, “Spaceship Earth”). From 2016 to 2020, she ran the research platform “Transfashional”, which mapped fashion-related artistic practices and advocated for the necessity of promoting and sustaining fashion-based trans-disciplinary productions within art institutions and museums. Focus on the relations between art and fashion, and fashion curating is also the subject of her teaching at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (2008/2010), Polimoda (since 2010), Istituto Marangoni (since 2019), Academy of Fine Arts Catanzaro (since 2022) and NABA - Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Rome (since 2024). Her activity as a curator and writer began in the late 90s. Since then, she has curated numerous group and solo exhibitions for international public and private institutions and Biennial manifestations in Venice and other cities.
Course on Art and Fashion
REAL PRESENCE : http://www.ica-realpresence.org 2001 – 2010 curating with Biljana Tomic “Real Presence” in Belgrade – currently the biggest workshop for emerging generations of artists operating in the Balkan area. This manifestation involved about 1500 young artists from about 100 art academies, from more than 60 countries of Europe, Asia, Africa and Americas. In 2005 was realised in collaboration with IUAV – FDA, as parallel event within official program of 51. Venice Biennial; in 2007 was realised in collaboration with Garajistanbul and Istanbul Modern, as parallel event within official program of 10. Istanbul Biennial. In 2008 was realised at the Museum of Contemporary Art – Castello di Rivoli (TO) and in 2009 in collaboration with IUAV – FDA and Educational and promotional department of Venice Biennial.