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20 april 2024

11th cei venice forum for contemporary art curators: updating in venice on indipendent initiatives in the field of CEE contemporary art

The Agencies We Need.
11th CEI Venice Forum for Contemporary Art Curators. Continental Breakfast 2024.

The meeting is a CEI Co-operation Activity and a Continental Breakfast 2024 project, organized by Trieste Contemporanea under the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the Italian Ministry of Culture, the Central European Initiative, the Italian National Commission for UNESCO, the Regione del Veneto, the Comune di Venezia, the Comune di Trieste, the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and the University of Trieste. It is made possible with the support of the Central European Initiative and the Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia, and in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, the KCB Cultural Centre of Belgrade, and the Juliet art magazine.

Venice, 20 April 2024 – The eleventh CEI Venice Forum for Contemporary Art Curators took place in Venice yesterday, an event that is biennially awaited as a moment of updating and discussion on the curatorial practices of art professionals in Central Eastern Europe in the period of pre-opening of the Venice Art Biennale. The meeting conceived and organized by the Trieste Contemporanea Committee and supported by the Central European Initiative took place at the Academy of Fine Arts, the Venetian educational institute of reference for the sector, also home to an exhibition linked to the Venice Biennale which inaugurates officially its 60th edition this morning.
The Agencies We Need –  this is the theme and title chosen for 2024 by Branko Franceschi, director of the Museum of Modern Art in Zagreb, appointed convenor of the eleventh edition of the Forum by its curator Giuliana Carbi Jesurun –  gave voice to authoritative curators and art professionals from Central Eastern Europe. Ioana Ciocan (Romania), Klaudia Fagu (Albania), Marin Ivanović (Bosnia and Herzegovina) Michal Koleček (Czech Republic), Róna Kopeczky (Hungary) Alexandra Lazar (Serbia), Tevž Logar (Slovenia) Martina Yordanova (Bulgaria), Vanja Žanko (Croatia) –  among them three art professionals that also are commissioners or curators of the national pavillions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary and Romania for the Biennale Arte 2024 – fully met expectations, discussing illuminating case studies in relation to the world of new independent initiative in Eastern European countries (such as the Association of Art Galleries Serbia and the Easttopics and Secondary Archive platforms or the Croatian agencies Nomad, and Romanian Art Safari or the Bulgarian artists’ residence latrus ) and also highlighting the unprecedented dual role of many CEE curators who are both working for public institutions and initiating independent initiatives of high social value for the regional communities to which they belong.
Furthermore, the attentive and large audience present at the Venice Academy decreed an ex aequo between Lera Kotsyuba (Ukraine) and Teodora Talhoș (Romania) regarding the first edition of the Young Art Critic Award Trieste Contemporanea, an initiative launched through an open Call by the Trieste organization precisely on the occasion of the eleventh CEI Forum, and which achieved a great success among CEE critics under 35 and a great quality in the texts submitted – announced the representatives of the jury present at the meeting. The two winners will soon be busy reviewing an art exhibition in their country for Juliet art magazine, published in Trieste since 1980.

go to previous Forum Editions

[last update: 20 April 2024]