Participants Visiting Curators Vienna 2025
Lucrezia Cippitelli (Italy) is an educator and researcher, with a track record of research and curatorial projects especially related to processes of radical pedagogy, community participation and postcolonial – decolonial movements in the Global South. She obtained a PhD in Art History at La Sapienza – University of Rome after a year of visiting scholar at the Africana Studies and Research Center of Cornell University (Ithaca, US). She is now tenured Professor of Aesthetics at Brera Academy of Visual Arts in Milano (Italy) where she coordinates the Master in Visual Cultures and Curatorial Studies as well as the PdH in Practice for artists and curators.
Her research revolves around art beyond the West; postcolonial and anticolonial critique; non-western modern epistemologies. She recently curated Sammy Baloji. K(C)ongo Fragments of interlaced dialogues (Le Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence 2022); Georges Senga, Comment un petit chasseur païen devient prêtre catholique (Museo delle Civiltà, Rome 2022), 7th Lubumbashi Toxicity Biennial (Democratic Republic of Congo), where she was artistic director of Ateliers Picha from 2019 to 2022.
Lucrezia Cippitelli and Simone Frangi are jointly serving as Artistic Directors of the Contemporary Art Programs at Kunst Meran (Merano, Italy), where they are conducting the triennial curatorial research project “The Invention of Europe. A Tricontinental Narrative” (2024 – 2027).
Simone Frangi (Italy) is a researcher, writer and curator. In his academic and curatorial work, he focuses on the use of theory as a form of action, on visuality as a site of critical struggle and on the political function of cultural research. He favours collaborations with practitioners who resonate with (post)identitarian militancy, anti-colonial options and politics of sexuality. Frangi holds a PhD in Philosophy – Aesthetics and Art Theory obtained in international co-tutoring from Université de Bourgogne – Dijon (FR) and Università Degli Studi di Palermo (IT) and a Postgraduate in Critical Theory of Society from Università degli Studi di Milano – Bicocca.
Since 2013, he has been Professor of “Aesthetics, Art Theory and Visual Culture” at ESAD – Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Grenoble (FR), where he co-founded the Research Unit “Hospitalité Artistique et Activisme Visuel” and the Festival des Gestes de la Recherche. From 2013 to 2017 he was the artistic director of Viafarini – Non profit organisation for artistic research (Milan, IT). Since 2013, he has been co-directing Live Works – Free School of Performance at Centrale Fies (Dro, Trento, IT) where he also created the Agitu Ideo Gudeta Fellowship.
Simone Frangi and Lucrezia Cippitelli are jointly serving as Artistic Directors of the Contemporary Art Programs at Kunst Meran (Merano, Italy), where they are conducting the triennial curatorial research project “The Invention of Europe. A Tricontinental Narrative” (2024 – 2027).
Una Mathiesen Gjerde (Norway) is a curator based between Oslo and Paris. Her research interests and curatorial work is centered around questions relating to precariousness, work ethics, economic models, and distribution systems, especially in relation to unionizing. Since 2022, she has been the director of the exhibition venue and artist union BO, The Association of Visual Artists Oslo. She is the former Head of Production for Fotogalleriet Oslo.
Aside her directorial position, Mathiesen Gjerde works as a freelance curator. Her recent projects include the exhibition Travail Utile, Fatigue Inutile for Encooore (Biarritz, 2025), the exhibition and seminar program Hothouse Flowers held between Podium, the University of Oslo Botanical Garden, and Kunstnernes Hus Kino, in collaboration with The Institute for Postnatal Studies in Madrid (Oslo, 2024), and the Tehran Summit 02 and 03, curated with Erfan Ghiasi for respectively Pachinko and BO (Tehran and Oslo, 2024 and 2025).
In 2021, Mathiesen Gjerde established the film and production company Amfitrite Produksjon AS, together with the artist and director Marin Håskjold. Since then the company has produced Håskjold’s latest short film The Hammer of Witches (set to premier in 2025), Joen Vedel’s phd-project from NTNU Trondheim Academy of Fine Art (2025), and co-produced a series of video works in Ellinor Aurora Aasgaard and Zayne Armstrongs artistic soap opera Days. Mathiesen Gjerde is also the studio manager for the French artist Damien Ajavon. Mathiesen Gjerde is also active as a writer, and published regularly in the Norwegian literature journal BLA, where she together with neuroscientist, Gjertrud Louise Laurell, bi-monthly writes dialogical texts on the female nobel laureates in literature.
Mathiesen Gjerde holds a MA in Art History from Copenhagen University, and a BA in ‘Cultural Entrepreneurship’ from Uppsala University. She has also studied French, Finance, and Social Economics. Mathiesen Gjerde was a part of CuratorLab 2021/2022 at Konstfack, University of Arts, Cras and Design in Stockholm, and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s Young Curators Residency Programme in Madrid in 2023.
Michael Hill (Ireland) is Programme Curator at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, and one half of the curatorial team (with Clíodhna Shaffrey) that represented Ireland at the 59th Venice Biennale 2022, and Irish Tour 2023, with artist Niamh O’Malley.
In his practice-led curatorial work, he collaborates closely with artists to produce site- and contextually-responsive exhibitions, whether they are in a gallery setting or outside of conventional spaces. In 2024 he curated two major exhibitions in the active industrial setting of Dublin Port, integrating large-scale immersive installations by Yuri Pattison in a disused pump house, and on an open-air graving dock with Liliane Puthod. In 2025 he will make independently curated exhibitions with Liliane Puthod at Weatherproof, Chicago; Mairead O’hEocha at The Model, Sligo; and solo exhibitions by Dragana Jurišić, Jorge Satorre and Frank Sweeney in his role at TBG+S.
He has worked with several artists on their first solo exhibitions in Ireland (Lisa Freeman, Fanny Gicquel, Tai Shani, Tamsin Snow), and curated solo exhibitions by artists who have represented their countries and exhibited at major global art events (Sean Edwards, Sean Lynch, Pilvi Takala, Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca).
His mentoring practice includes Freelands Artist Programme, Belfast; Jerwood Cultural Accelerator, London; Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Dublin. He is a member of the Arts Council of Ireland’s Peer Panel, a Member of IKT International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art, and a Board Member of Askeaton Contemporary Arts.
Julia Katharina Thiemann (Germany) works as a curator and author in various contexts and institutions as well as outside the usual institutional frameworks. Her curatorial practice explores pressing socio-political issues and ecological matters of our time, as well as current aesthetic discourses reflected in contemporary art.
Their most recent exhibitions include ‘The Senses of Plants’ (2024) at Villa Merkel in Esslingen, ‘My Body, a Coral Reef?’ and ‘Thinking like an Octopus, or: Tentacular Grasp’ at Wilhelm Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen, which examined paradigm shifts in human positioning in the planetary structure. In dialogue with theories from various disciplines, Julia Katharina Thiemann repeatedly investigates shifts in perspective in collaborative, research-based projects with international artists.
Julia Katharina Thiemann has a Master’s degree in Art History with a specialisation in Curatorial and Critical Studies from Goethe University and Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, as well as a Magister’s degree in Literature and Sociology at Leibniz University in Hanover. She has worked in numerous institutions as well as independently, including the Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst in Bremen, Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in Ludwigshafen, Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe, Q18 Quartier am Hafen in Cologne and others.
She regularly publishes on contemporary art. Her essays and reviews have been published in exhibition catalogues as well as professional publications, journals and magazines such as Tierstudien and KUNSTFORUM International.
For her curatorial and publicistic work, she has received the Esslinger Bahnwärter Grant for Curation, the Rhineland-Palatinate Curatorial Fellowship and the C/O Berlin Talent Award for Young Art Critics.
Verein K is an independent arts and cultural organization from Vienna, founded in 2017. Verein K focuses on projects in the field of contemporary art and culture connecting diverse cultural and social interests: critical approaches to contemporary art, creating curatorial platforms as well as enabling innovative cultural practices including diverse social groups.