Papini: alongside Alemani at the Biennale I learnt a lot

Marta Papini (born 1985, in Reggio Emilia) is an independent curator, who from 2024 curates the new four-year public art project conceived Radis promoted by the Fondazione per l'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT. She is also associate curator of Il parlamento delle marmotte, 9th edition of the Gherdëina Biennale (2024), and of Pensare come una montagna (2024-2026), with Lorenzo Giusti. In 2023, she was a member of the selection committee for the Future Generation Art Prize. She was the artistic organiser of 'The Milk of Dreams', 59th edition of the Venice Biennale, curated by Cecilia Alemani (2022). She has curated and organised several exhibitions, including 'The Artist is Present' at the Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2018, with Maurizio Cattelan). His proposal for the next Italian Pavilion at the Art Biennale was selected by the MiC Evaluation Commission.

Tell us about yourself, your path and your curatorial vision? Above all, which exhibitions, in terms of impact and importance, can be qualifying of your path?

I curated the first exhibition, "Shit and Die", in Turin, with Maurizio Cattelan and Myriam Ben Salah, on the occasion of Artissima in 2014. I had trained, also in Turin, by participating in the first edition of Campo, the course for curators promoted by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. After that experience I continued to curate exhibitions both in institutional spaces (at the Centro Pecci for five years and at the Quadriennale di Roma in the 2016 edition) and in public and unconventional spaces. I was the right hand of Cecilia Alemani for "The Milk of Dreams", Biennale Arte 2022. More recently, I have curated permanent public art commissions for Radis, a project promoted by the Fondazione per l'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT in Turin, and I have been associate curator of projects spread across the territory such as "Pensare come una montagna", promoted by GAMeC in Bergamo and "The Parliament of Marmots", Biennale Gherdëina 9, both with Lorenzo Giusti. For more than ten years I have been working with Maurizio Cattelan in curating exhibition projects and this has certainly influenced the way I curate exhibitions.

Looking back, is there an Italian Pavilion that has particularly impressed or inspired you and what mistakes should not be repeated? And broadening your gaze to international ones?

I am very attached to 'Il mondo magico', the Italian Pavilion curated by Cecilia Alemani in 2017, where I worked as assistant curator and co-curator of the catalogue. It was my first curatorial experience in Venice and it taught me a lot. That year I spent a lot of time at the Tese delle Vergini, because the installation was among the first to start: I slowly watched the Pavilion transform, and I fell in love with it. It is a space that presents many challenges, and I believe that every way of approaching it is legitimate, but personally I preferred the projects that enhanced its architecture. Among other recent pavilions, last year I really liked the Egypt Pavilion by Wael Shawky, and the Polish one by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas in 2022.