Let’s talk about you: what is your background, what do you teach, and what are your research interests?
I teach History of Russian Art, Contemporary Art and Curatorship. Working on Russian art is still considered eccentric. The "Russian art expert" is "too much of an expert" for art historians and a sort of "marginal decoration" for Slavic research. Not that this has ever discouraged me... In the Russian context, I have always been interested in the comparative study of art systems and the semiotics of culture and figurative arts, especially the work of Jurij Lotman, who I also translate. I have thoroughly studied the period starting with the Avant-Garde of the 1910s and 1920s up to the broader context of contemporary art. I have explored Socialist Realism in the arts, the Moscow underground movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and I have also covered some of the protagonists of the contemporary art scene. In the last few years, I have curated numerous projects on contemporary Russian artists, including Dmitry Prigov, AES+F, Valery Koshljakov, Aleksandr Ponomarev and Grisha Bruskin (to whom I have written two recent monographs) and Italian artists, including Cristina Finucci and Fabrizio Plessi. I was co-curator of the Russian Federation National Pavilion at the 2017 Biennale. I have designed many events on Russian cinema including the "Ruskino" festival in Venice. For some years now I have also been working on connecting the iconographic matrix of Russian culture, the icons, with contemporary art, even in a multi-year programme with the Intesa Sanpaolo Group's Gallerie d'Italia (Italian Galleries).
My most recent interests are in hybrid bodies, monsters and the problem of 'care' in art. I also work on art practices and the environment, dealing with sustainability in a broad sense: I am currently working on an international project I designed: "Sostenibilart". I have recently curated an extraordinary project by Lena Herzog, Last Whispers, which is about endangered languages.
Tell us about your academic path.
My story starts in Russia, from my Slavic studies at the University of Bergamo, and then moves on to the study of art. I wrote an 'extravagant' dissertation on painter and poet Elena Guro, thanks to an exceptional woman, my mentor, Nina Kaučisvili, who did not believe in rigid disciplinary separation. This led me, at a very young age and with a good dose of recklessness, to Moscow, St. Petersburg and Tartu, where I could understand the influence of Visual Culture in Russia, through artists such as Sarab'janov, Lotman and Daniel, just to mention the most famous and those I consider my mentors, and with the help of young scholars, who later became dear friends, who introduced me to archives, libraries and above all the homes of artists: a world that has become my world. I took my PhD at the University of Milan, defending a dissertation on the Russian-Armenian painter Georgij Jakulov. After a post-doctorate at the University of Genoa, I attended specialisation courses in art history and semiotics in Moscow, Tartu and St Petersburg and won scholarships at Warsaw and Harvard Universities. Even though all this took me to the margins of the comfort zone of what is recognised and approved by the so-called scientific community. On 6 March 2011, thanks to an enlightened rector, and to Giuseppe Barbieri, then director of the Department of Art History and Criticism, a thorough but 'unruly' scholar who changed my academic life forever, we were able to create the Centre for the Study of Russian Arts (CSAR), which quickly became the most active in this field in Western Europe.
What are you most passionate about in your research?
The unpredictability and mysterious nature of Russia always makes an alternative adventure possible. I get bored easily, and Russia is definitely not a boring country: there is a depth to its culture that has always fascinated and disturbed me, that you can never quite understand, never quite grasp. You always have to dig and have a bird's-eye view, as Gogol used to say, to perceive the 'beauty' and 'truth' that accompanies its cultural and human history. The image that summarises all this is the Russian icon, a spiritual and artistic mystery.
Doing all this along with my work as a teacher, researcher and curator has been an existential choice that would have been impossible without the deep passion that defines my relationship with Russian art. If I were in a novel, I would say that Russia has been a destiny for me, an undeniable choice: it has changed my life and continues to do so with my students.
What do teaching and researching mean to you?
In the last few years I have tried to develop among the students a new interdisciplinary professional profile, with a double expertise, able to write about the semiotics of art and to organise a scientific exhibition, knowing how to read the language of Russia, knowing its culture and background inside out. I believe that I have contributed to the growth of a small, aggressive school that courageously promotes these issues, which are not easy but essential at a delicate time when all possible cultural bridges must be maintained and preserved.
Teaching recharges me, it is like breathing, students repay me with a lot of dedication and great satisfaction. For me, the moment when I teach is a 'creative' moment, it is also linked to research, as Florensky said, pointing out the difference between lectio and lekcija. While the former means 'reading', the latter is closer to a kind of conversation, a dialogue: this is the only way in which a class is not merely a sterile exposition, but truly becomes a dialogue, an exchange, a mutual enrichment.
Which field have you always wanted to explore?
At the moment I am interested in artistic practice that is related to sustainability in a broad sense — environmental and social sustainability, as well as the topic of ‘care’ in art (in theoretical and practical ways). Moreover, I reflect on the relationship between art and trauma and on how the pandemic has influenced our view of the body and of its representation. Artists are the first to sense this change, this new vulnerability, and to convey it. I would like to study this, as we all wait that the current conflict allows us to regain access to Russian art, even outside its national borders.