CURA.

Formafantasma is a research-based design studio investigating the ecological, historical, political and social forces shaping the discipline of design today. The studio was founded in 2009 by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin. The aim of the studio is to facilitate a deeper understanding of both our natural and built environments and to propose transformative interventions through design and its material, technical, social, and discursive possibilities. Working from their studio in Milan (Italy) and Rotterdam (The Netherlands), the practice embraces a broad spectrum of typologies and methods, from product design through spatial design, strategic planning and design consultancy.
The studio’s prescient insight into the challenges facing design, culture, the environment and society has earned them the patronage of an array of international clients, such as Lexus, Flos, Fendi, Max Mara, Hermes, Droog, Nodus Rug, J&L Lobmeyr, Cassina, Bitossi, Established and Sons, La Biennale di Venezia, Rijks Museum, Dzek, Ginori, Hem, Maison Matisse, Bulgari, Samsung, Rado, Roll and Hill, Galleria Giustini / Stagetti, La Rinascente, Gallery Libby Sellers among others. Alongside works for clients, their projects have been presented, published and acquired in the permanent collection of international museums including: MoMA and Metropolitan Museum, New York; Art Institute Chicago; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, CNAP, Fondation Cartier and Centre Pompidou, Paris; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; MAK Museum, Vienna; Centraal Museum, Utrecht; Mudac, Lausanne; Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, North Carolina; MAXXI Museum, Rome; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Triennale di Milano, Milan; LACMA, Los Angeles and others.

Allison Katz (b. 1980, Montreal, Canada) engages with the complex and at times contradictory nature of contemporary artistic production, embracing the ambiguity of communication with a playful and inquiring touch that expands the conventional notion of an artist’s “signature style.” Katz’s work operates in a poetic space between mirror and mask, between revealing and concealing what is presented, calling attention to the multiple layers of consciousness that reside in a painting’s surface and subject.
Allison Katz studied Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal and received her MFA from Columbia University in New York. Katz is included in the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani, on view through November 2022. Recent exhibitions include: Artery, the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom at Nottingham Contemporary, which then traveled to Camden Art Centre, London (2021-2022). Additional significant institutional solo exhibitions of her work have been organized by: MIT List Center for the Arts, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Oakville Galleries, Ontario; and Kunstverein Freiburg. Notable recent group exhibitions include: Mixing It Up, Hayward Gallery, London; The Imaginary Sea, Fondation Carmignac, Porquerolles; Maskulinitäten, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn; Paint, Also Known as Blood, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; and Puddle, Pothole, Portal, SculptureCenter, New York. A comprehensive monograph on Katz’s work was published by JRP|Editions, Geneva in 2020.

Legacy Russell (b. 1986, New York City, USA) is a curator and writer. Born and raised in New York City, she is the Executive Director & Chief Curator of The Kitchen. Formerly she was the Associate Curator of Exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Russell holds an MRes with Distinction in Art History from Goldsmiths, University of London with a focus in Visual Culture. Her academic, curatorial, and creative work focuses on gender, performance, digital selfdom, internet idolatry, and new media ritual. Russell’s written work, interviews, and essays have been published internationally. Recent exhibitions include: Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon, The Kitchen (2022); Projects: Kahlil Robert Irving (2021), Projects: Garrett Bradley (2020), and Projects: Michael Armitage (2019), all at The Studio Museum in Harlem in partnership with The Museum of Modern Art; (Never) As I Was, This Longing Vessel, and MOOD The Studio Museum in partnership with MoMA PS1; Thomas J Price: Witness (2021), Dozie Kanu: Function (2019), Chloë Bass: Wayfinding (2019), and Radical Reading Room (2019) all at The Studio Museum in Harlem; LEAN with Performa’s Radical Broadcast online (2020) and in physical space at Kunsthall Stavanger (2021). She is the recipient of the Thoma Foundation 2019 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art, a 2020 Rauschenberg Residency Fellow, and a recipient of the 2021 Creative Capital Award. Her first book is Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (2020). Her second book, BLACK MEME, is forthcoming via Verso Books.

Miao Ying (b. 1985, Shanghai, China) is an artist based in New York and Shanghai. She is among the first generation of Chinese contemporary artists who grew up with the internet, Chinese economic reform and one-child policy, and were educated in both China and the West. She is known for her projects and writings addressing Chinese internet culture and coping with her Stockholm syndrome in relation to authoritarianism. Her solo exhibitions include: M+ Museum, Hong Kong (2018); New Museum, New York (2016); Chinese Pavilion, Venice Biennale (2015). Her work has been featured in international groups shows at: Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Turin (2020); 12th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2018); MoMA PS1, New York (2017); UCCA, Beijing (2017), amongst others. She is the recipient of the Porsche Young Chinese Artist of the Year (2018-2019).

Anri Sala (b. 1974, Tirana, Albania) constructs transformative, time-based works through multiple relationships between image, architecture, and sound, employing these as elements to fold, capsize, and question experience. His works investigate ruptures in language, syntax, and music, inviting creative dislocations, which generate new interpretations of history, supplanting old fictions and narratives with less-explicit, more-nuanced dialogues.
His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at: Kunsthaus Bregenz (2021); Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern, Houston (2021); Centro Botín, Santander (2019); Mudam, Luxembourg (2019); Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Turin (2019); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2017); New Museum, New York (2016); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2014); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2012); Serpentine Gallery, London (2011); Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (2008); and ARC, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2004). He has also participated in major group exhibitions and biennials internationally, including the 57th Venice Biennale (2017), documenta (13) (2012), the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010), the 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2007), and the 4th Berlin Biennale (2006). In 2013, he represented France in the 55th Venice Biennale.

Rose Salane (b. 1992, New York, USA) is an artist using collections of everyday objects as her entry point. Salane excavates the systems of evaluation, exchange, and organization that shape urban life. Her investigations demonstrate the ways in which larger bureaucratic forces order human activity, and the perseverance of humanity in the face of those automated and alienating structures. Extensively researching, analyzing, and categorizing objects and information, the artist forms often poignant connections between the personal and the institutional, as well as the mundane and the globally impactful. Solo presentations of Salane’s work have been held at: Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (2021); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2019); and Carlos/Ishikawa, London (2018). In 2021, her work was featured in the New Museum Triennial, Soft Water Hard Stone, New Museum, New York, and in 2022, at the Whitney Biennial, Quiet as It’s Kept, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 2022, she was a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Salane completed her MA in Urban Planning at Bernard & Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, CUNY, and her BFA at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

Sissel Tolaas has been working, researching and experimenting intensely on the subject of smell since 1990. Tolaas is considered an authority in the field of this scientific and artistic research, with important collaborations and exhibitions including: Documenta 13, Kassel; MOMA New York; MOMA, San Francisco; Fondation Cartier, Paris; Serpentine Galleries, London; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Tate Gallery, Liverpool; Venice Biennale; Kochi Biennale; TBA21, Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary; National Art Museum of China, Beijing; Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York; Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai; Art Institute of Chicago; Architecture Biennale 2015, Seoul, Shanghai & Venice; Time Museum, Guangzhou; Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen.
Her projects and research are among others in the field of: climate; heritage; inequality; geopolitics; sensory ecology; biology; archeology; anthropology; Anthropocene.  Tolaas has also worked with leading universities and research institutions and platforms including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Max Planck Institute; Nanyang Technical; Harvard University and Oxford University.
Among the numerous prizes awarded to Tolaas are mentioned: CEW New York 2014 Chemical Innovation Award; Rouse Foundation Award 2009, Harvard GSD; Ars Electronica Award 2010; Synthetic Biology / Synthetic Aesthetics, Stanford University, Oxford University & Harvard Medical school, 2010-2011-2012-2014. In 2004 Tolaas founded, with the support of IFF (International Flavors & Fragrances Inc.), the SMELL RE_searchLab in Berlin, a research laboratory  whose goal is to record, replicate, investigate  smell molecules and smell complex structure and to propose an alternative communication system: CHEMICAL COMMUNICATION. Tolaas has built multiple archives over the last 25 years, including: thousands of recordings of complex smell sources and individual molecules; language and para-phonetics sound; coding and function. Tolaas’ Mission: “There is a Whole world to smell & a whole World to educate how to smell.”