The Planetary Curator

Starting from reflections on the theme of the 2023 edition of Artissima, Relations of Care, the magazine CURA. presented The Planetary Curator, a series of talks, promoted by Jaguar, envisioned as a single flow of thoughts and discussion on the theme of care, in which various thinkers, including the Brazilian anthropologist Renzo Taddei, joined by artists and curators, have been invited to take part in the conversation.

The cycle of talks was organized with interweaving approaches, methods, aspects and themes related to different experiences, linguistic categories and narratives: after the discussion with Taddei, the director of the collections of Fondation Cartier in Paris Grazia Quaroni moved on to a conversation with French artist Fabrice Hyber, winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1997 and founder of La Vallée, an extensive zone of land set aside for an alternative plan for agriculture. This serves as an exemplary instance of how art can raise awareness about land use and the diversity of species. Fabrice Hyber then engaged with design curator Domitilla Dardi, most recently the creator of the BioGrounds project at Certosa Island in Venezia, where artists and designers have created performances and devices to raise awareness of trees, soils and landscapes. The discourse thus extended to contemporary design, through the experience of Formafantasma and their research on the origin of materials, which looks at the supply chain of materials while giving a voice to those who have none, from trees to farm animals. The Formafantasma meeting continued with Lucia Pietroiusti, curator and Head of Ecologies at the Serpentine in London, who shares methodologies and approaches to environmental decomposition, systemic change, and research as the central infrastructure of her work. Lucia Pietroiusti then concluded the round of talks, conversing with Nicolas Bourriaud, writer, founder of Radicants, and Artistic Director of the Gwangju Biennial 2024, to question the issues of humanity’s impact on the planet and on other species.