LECTURER - VISUAL ARTIST

BIO
Subject to collect#1”
#bridgebetween Christian Boltanski “Personnes” 2010 Michelangelo Pistoletto “Venere degli stracci” 1967 Erik Kessels “24 hours” 2011

How much our contemporary society is influenced by photography and how much the photographic technic is influenced by the society? Photography is the daughter of Psyche and Techne, of the human necessity to communicate and to create a new device for “improving communication”. If photography was not used in everyday social life, and as primary media, it would be relocated to a specialized lab, as a microscope.

Interpreting an archive is a matter of patience and intuition is above all asking the right questions. It’s about activating a collective memory.

Venetian, award-winning independent curator majored with a first class degree in Conservazione dei Beni Culturali (Ca’ Foscari), she has studied in both Venice and Paris winning a University fellowship at Magnum Photos Paris’ archives. Over the past ten years she has worked as a producer for both exhibitions and books, supporting over sixty photographers including Koudelka and D’Agata. Francesca’s work is linked to the production of a number of projects for Magnum Photos, both in Paris and Milan. Her works as a curator, writer and researcher include Shining in absence book (AMC - Kessels); Mother Nature (RVB - Kessels); Dalston Anatomy by Lorenzo Vitturi book (SPBH) and shows in Europe (Foam Museum in Amsterdam, CNA Luxembourg, The Photographers’ Gallery in London, in Yossi Milo Gallery in New York and at IMA Gallery Tokyo); Alex & Me by James Pfaff book (Montanari) and solo show at the Street Level Photoworks Gallery during the Festival Glasgow International 2018 and the new book Alex & Me – Coda by James Pfaff (Montanari) 2018; The Y by Alba Zari book 2019 (Witty Kiwi) and show at Maxxi in Rome (October 2019).

Francesca, previously leader of the group of curators and archival researchers at Fabrica of the Benetton Group, she is Tutor for Fashion, Art and Cultural Context BA at Istituto Marangoni (Manchester Metropolitan University) School of Fashion in London; Lecturer for the Photobook and SelfPublish BA course at London South Bank University. She supports artists and young creative in discovering their own style and in developing the concept and the layout of their book and exhibition. Her texts and curatorial works are published internationally by RVB, AMC, SPBH, Trolleybooks, Silvana Editrice, Montanari and Witty Kiwi.

In 2015 with the “Until Proven Otherwise / On the Evidence of the First Photos”, exhibited at Format Festival, she won the Paul Hill Exposure FORMAT15 Award. The exhibition became an Open Air Museum and an Urban Intervention firstly in Bari in 2015, invited by Planar and than at Puntasecca in 2016 for Gazebook Festival. In November 2016 the project was exhibited with a new installation at the Wroclaw Museum to celebrate the European Capital of Culture. The obsession of the First Time continues in her curatorial practice with the project Everything has its FirstTime where Francesca digs up many archetypes of our contemporary society and transforms archival materials into conceptual art. Her new works include the exhibition Quantum Pixel at Brighton Festival of Art in 2016, the video Secret Communication, The First Onscreen Woman Orgasm at London Photo Fair 2016, at Venice Film Festival 2016 and at Photo Saint Germain, Paris 2017; Fabrica x Aquagranda at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa Gallery, Venice 2016; the video Women from Ca’ Pesaro commissioned and projected at Ca’ Pesaro, Museum of Modern Art of Venice, 2017 and at Venice Film Festival 2018. In September 2017 she was invited to do an audio performance for the collective POIUYT at UNSEEN Festival. In November 2018 she co-curated the exhibition representing the Venetian Heritage at SUZHOU DESIGN WEEK. She is actually working on “The Fist Photos – Polysemy of the primitive gesture” an archival and semiotic project. She currently lives in Venice and works worldwide.  For Format Festival (Derby, UK), in March 2023, she curated The Performing Photobook a sensory and ASMR exhibition, with workshops and performance, and bookfair for Format23. In July 2023, in Gibellina on The Road Festival, she exhibited her project Magnification – A conscious act of seeing.

www.thefirstphotos.com
youtube: everything has its first time

linktr.ee/francesca_seravalle

contact: francesca.seravalle@gmail.com