Sara Giannini is an independent researcher, curator, teacher and writer based in Amsterdam. Informed by her background in theatre studies and semiotics, she is drawn towards the interlinking of language and performativity across a variety of (artistic) practices. Her engagement with the curatorial emerges from the desire to challenge the structures, categories and formats of producing and presenting art.
As an independent curator she has initiated and developed long-term projects in close dialogue with artists and practitioners in different fields, in and out of traditional art contexts. Long-term projects include the VOLUME project, a series of artistic interventions in Beirut public libraries curated in collaboration with 98weeks (2013-2014), the web-publishing and archiving platform Unfold (2015-ongoing), and the independent curatorial initiative Heterotropics, commissioning and facilitating projects that reflect on the after-lives of colonial desire in different urban and cultural landscapes (2016-ongoing). In 2016/17 she was a research fellow at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, researching aphasic language in relation to the archive of the Dutch artist René Daniëls. The fellowship resulted in the multi-fold project OWNNOW: René Daniëls, which included an exhibition and a series of performances for one spectator conceived with artists Mercedes Azpilicueta and Stav Yaini.
She is currently leading a course on Opera Corruption together with the Amsterdam organization If I Can’t Dance and artist Pauline Curnier Jardin at the DAI Roaming Academy. Opera and the gesamtkunstwerk will also be the focus of her upcoming fellowship at CCS Bard in the fall 2018.
After her MA in Semiotics from the University of Bologna, Sara worked as curator and researcher for Global Art and the Museum at the ZKM | Karlsruhe (2010-2014), and was artistic coordinator of the traveling research group OuUnPo | Ouvroir d’Univers Potentiels. Her projects have taken place in institutional settings, urban contexts, online platforms and independent project spaces, including Jumex Museum, Mexico City; documenta 14, Athens; the Museum of Modern Art, Kunsthalle São Paulo and Casa do Povo, São Paulo; de Appel, Stedelijk Museum, Rijksmuseum and Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam; 98weeks, Mansion, Assabil Public Libraries, Beirut; Akademie der Künste, Berlin; PrintRoom, Rotterdam; to name a few. She is the editor of the book Whispering Catastrophe. On the Language of Men Loving Men in Japan, final outcome of a research and collaboration with artist Jacopo Miliani, forthcoming for SelfPleasurePublishing (2018).