Sara Giannini is an Italian curator, writer, and educator based in Amsterdam. With a background in theatre studies and semiotics, her curatorial practice explores the entanglements of language and performativity as tools for rethinking dominant modes of knowledge production. Her work is grounded in performance studies, feminist and queer histories, decolonial thought, and disability justice, and often unfolds through long-term, processual, and collaborative projects across performance, exhibitions, publications, and pedagogy.
From 2010 to 2014, she was part of the Global Art and the Museum (GAM) program at ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, where she contributed to research and curatorial projects at the intersection of global art histories and institutional critique. Since 2020, Sara has been Programme Curator at If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, Amsterdam, where she co-develops art and research commissions in the expansive field of performativity. As an independent curator, she has initiated numerous projects, including VOLUME (Beirut), Unfold, and Heterotropics (Amsterdam), and has held curatorial fellowships at institutions such as the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, and CCS Bard, New York. Her projects often engage with the unseen, the absent, and the occult, as well as with that which is discarded, erased, or forgotten.
She has held teaching and mentoring positions at several art academies in the Netherlands, including the Sandberg Instituut and Dutch Art Institute, and is currently a Studio Practice Tutor at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague.