Researcher-in-Residence
Portrait of Sonia D’Alto by Alicja Khatchikian, Design by Lisa Sturacci studio, © AWARE : Archives of Women Artists, Research & Exhibitions
As part of the residency programme for research on women and non-binary photographers and video artists, AWARE will welcome curator, researcher, and writer Sonia D’Alto to the Villa Vassilieff, from January to April 2024.
During this residency, S. D’Alto will delve into the cinematic production of the Neapolitan feminist collective Le Nemesiache, exploring both their experimental films and in their pioneering work organizing the Feminist Film Festival. She plans to focus on two aspects inherent to their practice: creative fabulation and strong political stances. In the multiciplicity of forms of Le Nemesiache’s work, matrilineal lineages and women’s spirituality coexist with the feminist politics of commons, intersectional liberation movements, and artistic ecologies. The restoration of emotional ties with nature and re-conceptualisation of culture beyond the fictional gender split are explored through the ’Nemesiac’ philosophy and praxis. In their historical films, figures such as witches, prophetesses and sirens return to evoke and restore the collective dimension of our memories. Similarly, many of today’s feminist critical artistic practices conjure a cosmological rewriting of reality, spiritual memories, and folktales beyond the hegemonic culture. By foregrounding an intergenerational approach and forms of nonlinear memories, a consistent part of the research will be dedicated to feminist, personal archives and oral histories. S. D’Alto will trace Le Nemesiache’s relations within and beyond Paris, from its past and present, investigating how collective memory can be transmitted from one generation to the next through sensorial archives.
Sonia D’Alto is pursuing a practice-based PhD at the HFBK in Hamburg and has collaborated with art institutions, and collectives and participated in the organization of artist residencies. Her curatorial practice is grounded on historical and speculative methodologies experimenting with a political imagination of the future, as exemplified by her work, “Confabulations and Insurgent Spiritualities” (working title), addressing the relationships between superstition and modernity, folktales and power taxonomies through feminist gestures, counter-colonial practices, and subaltern cosmologies. Currently, she is a lecturer at the Curatorial Studies postgraduate program at KASK in Ghent.
The external members of the selection committee were:
Julie Crenn is an art historian, art critic (AICA) and an independent curator. Since 2018, she has been associated with the programming of Transpalette – Centre d’art contemporain in Bourges, France. In 2005, she obtained a master’s degree in art history and criticism from Rennes 2 University, with a thesis on the art of Frida Kahlo. Continuing her research into feminist and decolonial practices, she was awarded a Doctorate in Art history and theory from Michel de Montaigne, Bordeaux III University. Her thesis is a reflection on contemporary textile practices (from 1970 to the present day). Since then, she has been conducting intersectional research on bodies, memories, and artistic activism.
Clara Schulmann has been writing for over ten years. She teaches theory in art schools. At the Beaux-arts de Paris, her seminar Les Fileuses focuses on storytelling. She regularly collaborates with artists. In 2020, she published Zizanies (Paraguay Press), a first-person narrative in which these collaborations hold a special place. Since January 2022, she and Thomas Boutoux have been hosting a live radio show from the Jocelyn Wolff gallery in Romainville, entitled En déplacement, a long-term investigation into forks in the road – in the art world, but not only.
Valentine Umansky is a curator and author. She has worked for several years with institutions dedicated to the visual arts and currently holds a position at the Tate Modern in London. In the USA, she has collaborated with the International Center of Photography, MoMA in New York and the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. Prior to this, she worked at Rencontres d’Arles and published, in France, the book Duane Michals, Storyteller with Editions Filigranes. Her most recent curatorial projects include installations by Belkis Ayón, Tourmaline, Cinthia Marcelle, Buhlebezwe Siwani, Dineo Seshee Bopape and Rosa Barba at the Tate, the organization of the Villa Medici Film Festival 2023 in Rome, the curation of two parallel solo exhibitions on Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum and Saya Woolfalk, and Confinement. Politics of Space and Bodies. Invited as co-curator of the LagosPhoto Festival in 2018, she and Iheanyi Onwuegbucha (CCA Lagos) led a vast project dedicated to modern and contemporary Nigerian art, Layers, exhibited in France in 2020. She has also translated Roger Caillois’ poetry collection Pierres (DittoDitto) and collaborated on the French release of L’Art du Féminisme (Chronicle Books).
This residency received the support of Neuflize OBC Foundation.
