London, England, United Kingdom
Contemporary Art / Research / Museums / Visual Cultures / Art Publishing
My research draws on curatorial practice and the study of exhibition histories. It focalises on the histories of large biennial exhibitions and approaches the 12th edition of Manifesta as a case-study, in order to examine the field from a curatorial point of view through both practice and theory. How are local institutions, social groups, activists, and community interests and concerns expressed across the international art circuit and its means of creating transnational articulations through biennials, large-scale art events, and itinerant exhibitions? These and further concerns forms the main research questions of my investigation. Supervisors: Michael Asbury and Dave Beech. I am also a member of the TrAIN research Centre. In 2023 I organised in collaboration with my colleagues and peers a students-led seminar series. held from March to June 2023. The series, which engaged PhD students across UAL, hosted seven appointments with seven notable artists, thinkers, scholars, and curators convened by students from the TrAIN centre. The seminar and the publication that will follow seek to explore a variety of themes developed by specialists in their fields while enhancing UAL’s contribution to the discussion. The themes and speakers have been chosen for their relevance towards current research being undertaken at TrAIN and include subjects such as the intersections of Black methodologies and curatorial practices, innovative approaches towards archives, performance, and aesthetics ranging from critical engagements with notions such as the transnational and globalisation to the work of decolonisation and the destabilisation of dominant histories. On this occasion, I chaired a session with artist Maria Thereza Alves titled Machineries of Representations.
At the Fondazione Morra Greco I am the in-house curator of the foundation and the main referent for the exhibition programme planning, organisation and production. My responsibilities include coordinating the communication and educational team on the making and deliverying of exhibitions; liaising with artists, galleries, and other institutions; act as mediator between the internal and the external personnel, including guest curators, artists, and the institution’s departments; researching and writing grants in collaboration with the rest of the team or independently, fundraising for exhibitions and other related activities including residencies; negotiating with suppliers, coordinating the art handlers team, and ensure a correct operational flow in collaboration with the administration; writing curatorial texts, collaborating with the communication department to deliver editorial projects and small publications dedicated to exhibitions; mediate the relation between the foundation’s President, artists, and galleries to ensure artworks acquisition into the foundation collection; coordinating with the registrars for the mobilisation of the collection for internal and external exhibitions, loans, and other. Exhibitions I curated: Keep on Movin', 2022; GOAL!, 2023; Tanz auf dem Vulkan, 2023. Cezary Bodzianowski, 2024; Gregor Schneider, 2024; Mark Dion, Alexis Rockman, Dana Sherwood, 2025. Talks and events: Traversing Quicksands, Talk with Gennaro Ascione, Iain Chambers, and Celeste Ianniciello. Coordinator on Site: BEL PAESE. PROMOTING ITALIAN ART AROUND THE WORLD, promoted by Comitato Fondazioni Italiane and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin. Mark Dion, Dana Sherwood, Alexis Rockman and Dorothy Spears guests of Fondazione Morra Greco in Naples.
Assistant curator to exhibition projects curated by Salvatore Lacagnina, Claudia Gioia (2024), Lorenzo Benedetti (2024). Assisting Curator and International Relations Coordinator Diana Campbell Betancourt in the organisation of the EDI Global Forum 2022 liaising with 70+ international museum institutions invited to share best practices in the field of museums and art education.
Since 2022, I have been working as a freelance curator for Fondazione Elpis in Milan, serving as the regional curator for Sicily and Campania as part of the Una Boccata d’Arte project. In this role, I have curated several site-specific public commissions, including projects by Isaac Chong Wai (b. 1990, Hong Kong) in 2021, Serena Vestrucci (b. 1986, Italy) in 2022, and Andrea Martinucci (b. 1992, Italy) in 2024. This coming June, I will curate a new commission by Tild Green (b. 1994, UK). My responsibilities span from curatorial direction to full project management, overseeing each commission from concept to completion. I also act as the key liaison between Fondazione Elpis and the local public administrations of the villages hosting the artworks, ensuring a smooth dialogue between artists, institutions, and communities.
Isaac Chong Wai Post-Mythical Accidents curated by Giulia Pollicita 2022, Sicily Post-Mythical Accidents is a widespread public work by Berlin-based artist Isaac Chong Wai who investigates the layered complexity inscribed in the landscape of eastern Sicily. Intertwining reality, myth, religion and magic, Chong’s intervention unfolds in a series of installations scattered around the village of Castiglione di Sicilia. Observing the wonder and constant fear of living at the foot of Mount Etna – source of life and constant threat of uncertain benevolence at the same time – the artist reflects on how the uncontrollable force of nature shapes a sense of immanence in human thought and behavior. Taking refuge in myth, faith or superstition, we try to scoff at fate and explore the mystery of nature. By forcing the unexplainable into the creation of myths and narratives, human beings pigeonhole what they cannot foresee within an anthropocentric vision. The installations Accidental Confessional and Lightless Chandelier investigate the persistence of myth and religion, intertwining traces of Homer with the Christian tradition. Accidental Lava Stone got stuck in a Bus Stop and Accidental Lava Stone hits a Facist Ornament connect with the Mediterranean legend of Ulysses and Polyphemus and the myth of the Faraglioni from Acitrezza, interacting with the surrounding area and recent history. Shangai (2022), well-known as Mikado game in Italy, represents the scene in which mystification, exoticism and different cultures alternate without rules, depending on an order set by the real and the unreal, history and myth, religion and the primitive instinct of survival. In this context, the “post-mythical” represents a hybrid area where the rules of reality are suspended and a new order is established by narrative, fiction, fantasy and magic.
decentering in Ceramics is a group exhibition curated by Giulia Pollicita that celebrates ceramics’ symbolic power and highlights this medium’s political, social, identitary and imaginative declinations through the work of eight female artists. The exhibition situates seminal sculptures by Franca Maranò and Nedda Guidi, pioneers in technical and formal experimentation, alongside new works by an international group of artists: Chiara Camoni, Gaia Fugazza, Florence Peake, Raffaela Naldi Rossano, Holly Stevenson and Zoe Williams. Through this intergenerational dialogue, the exhibition reverses the narration of a medium historically relegated to the 'decorative' realm, partially retracing its history and highlighting its potential for freedom. The works of Gaia Fugazza, Florence Peake, Holly Stevenson and Zoe Williams were created in Rome in 2022 tas part of Laboratorio Piramide’s residency programme, a project financed by the Lazio region to promote the encounter between contemporary art and craftsmanship, which allowed the artists to work in the historic Bottega Paolelli in the Bravetta district, experimenting with materials, techniques and processes of the Italian tradition. decentering in Ceramics, is a tribute to the decentralisation of ceramics from the official historical-artistic discourse to celebrate its subversive potential while remaining in the wake of its millenary tradition. The title alludes to the ability of these works to reflect the current historical and artistic moment, "decentralised" with respect to univocal categories and readings, referring to the text published in 1989 by Mary C. Richards, Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person, which alludes to the gesture of centering on the wheel in the traditional processing of clay and to the discipline imposed by the processing of ceramics as a philosophy of life. Artists: Chiara Camoni, Gaia Fugazza, Florence Peake, Raffaela Naldi Rossano, Holly Stevenson and Zoe Williams
Laboratorio Piramide is an itinerant, independent project on contemporary art & craftmanship. Providing artists with facilities and tools, Laboratorio Piramide promoted a programme of residencies and production for contemporary artists in collaboration with Paolelli Ceramics corkshop and the Bulla Litography workshop in Rome. Laboratorio Piramide is a project realised within Avviso Pubblico VitaminaG, a programme of GenerAzioniGiovani.it, and is supported by Youth Policies of the Lazio Region, and by the Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri - Youth Department. Artists: Gaia Fugazza, Piero Golia, Florence Peake, Zoe Williams, Holly Stevenson.