PUBLIC PROGRAM | ESTE FOCUS | The 59th Venice Biennale: Cecilia Alemani
Cecilia Alemani, Artistic Director of the 59th Venice Biennale
In conversation with Laura Bardier, Director of ESTE ARTE

With the collaboration of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura a Montevideo. This activity will be held in English, without translation.

CECILIA ALEMANI
Italian curator based in New York. Alemani has developed an expertise in commissioning and producing ambitious artworks for public and unusual spaces. Recently, she served as the Artistic Director of the much anticipated 59th Venice Biennale (2022). In 2018, Alemani was Artistic Director of the inaugural edition of Art Basel Cities: Buenos Aires. She curated a city-wide exhibition, titled “Hopscotch” (Rayuela), that featured works by 18 international artists in close dialogue with their venues, shaping a multilayered experience that connected visual art, urban spaces, and the city’s histories in unexpected ways. Among the participating artists were Eduardo Basualdo, Pia Camil, Maurizio Cattelan, Gabriel Chaile, Alex Da Corte, Leandro Katz, Barbara Kruger, Luciana Lamothe, Ad Minoliti, and Stan VanDerBeek.
Since 2011, she has been the Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art in New York. Alemani spearheaded the High Line Plinth, a new program featuring monumental artworks that started in June 2019 with Brick House, a sculpture by artist Simone Leigh. During her tenure at the High Line, she has commissioned major projects by El Anatsui, Phyllida Barlow, Carol Bove, Sheila Hicks, Rashid Johnson, Zoe Leonard, Faith Ringgold, Ed Ruscha, Nari Ward, and Adrián Villar Rojas, among others. Alemani has also organized group exhibitions on and around the High Line featuring works by many young and emerging artists. These shows have examined the role of art in creating and defining public spaces, the relationship between humankind and nature, and technology’s inescapable obsolescence, among other timely topics. Moreover, she launched an ongoing performance series and a daily video series.
Other projects have included commissioning of Alexandra Pirici for Art Basel in 2019; curating the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2017; curating Frieze Projects (2012-2017); directing the year-long X Initiative, New York (2009-2010). Alemani also worked as an independent curator collaborating with museums such as Tate Modern (London) and MoMA PS1 (New York), the Whitney Museu (New York), Gió Marconi Gallery (Milan), non-profit institutions, such as Artists Space and Art in General (New York), and private foundations, like the Deste Foundation. She is also a co-founder of No Soul For Sale, a festival of independent spaces, nonprofit organizations, and artists’ collectives. Alemani has written extensively for various publications, including Artforum and Mousse Magazine, and has a weekly column in D, Repubblica as of October 2019. She has authored, co-authored, edited and contributed entries to a number of books.

Laura Bardier is Executive Director of the James Howell Foundation in New York and the founding Director of the Este Arte art fair in Punta del Este, Uruguay. In 2017, Bardier was appointed to incorporate the artist-endowed foundation in honor of American artist James Howell, which fosters his legacy and supports educational programs, exhibitions, and scholarships. With the founding of Este Arte in 2015, Bardier generated a platform for the professionalization of the arts that has profoundly shifted the Latin American art scene and market, producing a radical increase in the region’s cultural awareness. Previously, Bardier held key positions at the Cultural Department of the Municipality of Napoli (Italy) and major private collections in the United States. She has curated exhibitions in Uruguay, Italy, and the U.S.; her writing on contemporary art has been published in Domus Magazine, Arte al Día, Review, and Infonegocios. Bardier was a member of the National Committee of Visual Arts of Uruguay and is a Board member of ArtTable. She received her BA from the Università Degli Studi di Firenze and her MA from the Donau University in Austria.