lorenzo fusi
Artistic Director &
Curator of Yerevan Biennial 2021
Email: lorenzo@yerevanbiennial.org
The newly appointed Lorenzo Fusi was the Artistic Director of the Prix International d’Art Contemporain (PIAC) organised by the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco between 2014 and 2020. Under his directorship, the PIAC presented the work of the 2016 awardee, Rosa Barba, in Brazil in partnership with Museum de Arte Moderna de São Paulo and co-commissioned Barba’s film Disseminate and Hold premiered at the 32nd São Paulo Biennial. More recently, Fusi presented Love Is The Message. The Message Is Death by Arthur Jafa, 2019 PIAC award-winner, at Palazzo Madama in Turin in collaboration with the Fondazione Torino Musei and the art-fair Artissima.
Between 2016 and 2018, Fusi was the Visiting Academic Curator at the Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary (Canada), where he directed the Illingworth Kerr Gallery and collaborated with a plethora of partners in the city and the broader region. Exemplary, he organised the exhibition Performing the Landscape staged across five local institutions that included work by Janine Antoni, Ming Wong, Bill Viola and Mikhail Karikis among others.
For City of Calgary he created a public art commissioning series and professional development project directed to local artists with an interest in the public sphere, socially-engaged and participatory practices led by Tania Bruguera, Alfredo Jaar and Jeanne van Heeswijk. In 2017 he acted as a mentor and advisor for the 2017 Alberta Biennial of the Arts, co-organised by the Art Gallery of Alberta and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Fusi’s most recent endeavour in Canada, the exhibition The Sodomite Invasion: Experimentation, Politics and Sexuality in the Work of Jimmy DeSana and Marlon T. Riggs is on view at the Griffin Art Projects in Vancouver. The exhibition is accompanied by a screening and public talks programme in partnership with the Belkin Art Gallery at University of British Columbia and The Cinematheque.
In 2013-2015, Fusi was the Director of the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool (UK) one of the oldest not-for-profit galleries dedicated to photography and lens-based practices in Europe. Here, he curated critically acclaimed shows, including Letizia Battaglia: Breaking the Code of Silence; Tim Hetherington: You Never See Them Like This and his final project at the gallery Zanele Muholi: VUKANI/RISE.
Previously, Fusi was the International Curator of the Liverpool Biennial for which he curated the 2010 and 2012 editions of the main biennial exhibition, entitled respectively Touched and The Unexpected Guest. The incredible experience gained by Fusi from these large-scale endeavours, with their distinct focus on the public sphere and use of non-traditional venues, as well as the collaborative institutional modus-operandi and diffusiveness of the Biennial represents a real asset for the Yerevan Art Foundation that similarly aims to transversely engage the entire city. Under Fusi’s vision, the Liverpool Biennial delivered memorable projects such as Bridging Home by Do-Ho Suh (a Korean home suspended mid-air connecting two adjacent buildings) and the conversion of an entire dilapidated block in Liverpool’s city centre into an art-hub showcasing differently-themed exhibitions, including the UK premiere of Ryan Trecartin‘s work, the participatory performance The Mending Project by Ling Mingwei, and Tania Bruguera’s radical pedagogical platform Cátedra Arte de Conducta (former Rapid Store on Renshaw Street).
Prior to his appointment in Liverpool, Fusi was the Senior Curator at Palazzo delle Papesse Contemporary Art Centre and, after the merge, at the Santa Maria della Scala Museum hub (Siena, Italy). In Siena, Fusi curated a wealth of innovative projects both in the approach and methodology. Exemplarily, the exhibition System Error: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning co-curated with artist Naeem Mohaiemen exploring conflict and warfare through the lens of the work of over 60 artists, or the large generational survey .ZA Young Art From South Africa (co-curated with Marlene Dumas, Kendal Geers, Bernie Searle, Minnette Vari and Sue Williamson) that introduced in Europe the powerful work of many by-now established artists such as Dineo Seshee Bopape or Nicholas Hlobo. Other highlights of Fusi’s programme in Siena, include commissions to Olafur Eliasson (The Uncertain Museum, 2004), Jenny Holzer’s longest-ever-running outdoor projection For Siena, an acclaimed retrospective of the work of Gordon Matta-Clark (2008) and the first ever institutional exhibition of the work of French artist Cyprien Gaillard in Italy (2009).