"Inhabiting the Wild" | Interviewing Tomorrows/Today curator, Dr Mariella Franzoni

To truly inhabit the wild, you need to dismiss nostalgic desires and instead accept a new sense of bewilderment, unpredictability and chaos. Inspired by queer theorist, Jack Halberstam’s essay “Wild Things: A Desire for the Wild”, that is exactly what Tomorrows/ Today’s curator, Dr Mariella Franzoni, has so aptly addressed in “Into the Wild”, the 2024 edition of the curated section. In her second year as the section’s curator, Franzoni questions the ‘colonial fantasies of a primordial nature and undomesticated otherness’, calling twelve emerging and underrepresented artists spread across the globe to action in an artistic reimagining of ‘wildness’.

 

 

Milla Peerutin: This is your second year curating the Tomorrows/Today section at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, however your journey to curating started long before your ICTAF debut. Considering that your PhD was actually centred around the theory of curating, it is particularly fascinating to share your understanding of the role of the curator and perhaps address some preconceived ideas the public, and the art world, may have.

Dr Mariella Franzoni: I think this question ‘what is the role of a curator?’ can receive so many answers. We become curators for very different reasons and from very different contexts.

 

In my case, I started experimenting with curating during my PhD from a theoretical space but I had already immersed myself in the art world. I had surrounded myself with artists, collectors and gallerists for a long time. I would say I was fascinated, but afraid to start curating. until the Director of the LOOP Festival (in Barcelona), who I knew from attending this festival, approached me to ask, “Mariella, why don’t you propose an exhibition for the festival?” and I said “wow, yes, of course.” I was afraid to do it by myself so I talked to three other colleagues at my university and said we have to do it. We put it together in just a week. It was then that we started our collective, Principio Activo Colectivo, here in Barcelona. I remember the feeling of joy and exploring that I had spent so much researching. That was the first occasion I had the chance to work on a project, it was a true collaborative effort and this collaboration is something that I really love. There are, of course, times where you would curate on your own, but it is my research-based and collaborative approach that distinguished my understanding of curating.

It is the dynamic of curating that is so fascinating. How, as a curator, you are able to interpret art, make it accessible, make it understandable. Curators can also be this bridge between artists, galleries and potential collectors. The role of the curator, my understanding of the ‘curator’, is strongly informed by the broader understanding of the art world. My role for Tomorrows/Today implies many different aspects, starting with the exercise of drafting a curatorial framework that is tuned with my curatorial journey and inquietude, with the concept/theme proposed by the fair, and with the context of South Africa. The second part of the process is identifying the artists and selecting the proposals that would potentially be the best fit for the program. I sometimes approach the artists directly to gather more insights on their work, sometimes it is artists that I have been following and knowing for a while, sometimes are galleries that approach me to propose a specific artist whose work I then explore..and, because the section is open to spontaneous submissions by galleries, at the end I review all the submitted projects proposals and make the final choice. In this part of the work, it is also possible that I find emerging artists that have not yet a gallery and so I might connect them with a gallery that is aligned with their work and might potentially be a good fit for Tomorrows/Today. There is a part of art management in curating that is also important, because we are a part of an art ecosystem, and in my case this means supporting the galleries and the artists throughout this process..it is beautiful to accompany them in giving platform and care to an emerging artist that might not have a huge attention in a main booth. We turn them into the protagonist. It is also about mediating the curatorial vocation of TT within the art fair context.

So, the curator can take different shapes, depending on the context. It means to be flexible, to respond to the need of that context. Especially when you work with artists at the beginning of their career, you are called to accomplish a duty not only toward these artists, but also toward the art community and the society at large. This is, of course, talking about freelance curating but can also be said for curating within an art institution. It is about being part of an artist's early career, guiding them through a journey, understanding their processes and mapping their work, trying to identify their best line of work and how they connect with themes, questions and practices outside of their studios.. Also, explaining how the art world works and connecting them with like-minded people and organisations, and so on. All of these practices imply a sense of caring of what is important and caring for the people around you, which is very much “curatorial” by definition. I feel this is a key value that I share with many fellow curators from South Africa, a country that has helped shape both my caring and critical approaches to curating.

 

MP: This ‘call to duty’ is incredibly fascinating and so apt when thinking about an exhibition as a story and as you said, the curator as its author. When creating these ‘stories’, like you have done with “Inhabiting the Wild”, what brings joy to the act of curating and what are some of the challenges a curator might face?

MF: I would say working with artists. There is a way of inspiring each other daily, to dive into conversation with people that live with passion. Artists live with passion. That is something that brings us together, artist and curator- there is not a single day that we get bored. Our life is very much embedded in work and our work becomes embedded in our lives. You know, I have met people in life who do not know what to do with their time and I have really struggled to be familiar with that feeling. People in the art world have great expectations for what we can do in one day. For me, I try to squeeze as much as I can till the last hour of the night to accomplish the day’s goals.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t difficult parts to being in the art world, in being in the curatorial context. There are, of course, difficult parts. Care, consideration, is very valuable in the art world and is, at times, taken for granted. This is where it is important to think of challenges as opportunities.

I suppose another challenge to overcome, is how there is little said in good faith about the relationship between curatorial practice, collecting and the art market. This is an ideological challenge you must overcome. I have had the privilege to engage, both personally and professionally, with collectors that have inspired me just as much as artists that have inspired me. They inhabit the art world with respect and understand the responsibility of their role in the ecosystem. I have worked with collectors that have often said “how can I help make this project happen?”, that have worked with me throughout the project- not to take credit, but rather to support. There is a beautiful synergy that can happen within the sphere of art curating and art collecting.

MP: This is so true. The relationship between artist, curator and collector and their synergy is so vital to the inner workings of the art ecosystem. Which brings us to your role within that ecosystem, and more specifically your role as the curator of Tomorrows/ Today. This year’s theme is “Inhabiting the Wild '' and your curatorial statement, you discuss queer theorist Jack Halberstem’s book “Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire ''. What spurred on this desire to unpack this new epistemology of the wild? Has the idea of ‘undomesticated otherness’ been something that you had thought about before?

MF: I really wanted to stretch the fair’s theme (“Unbound”) to the extreme of its meaning. I started thinking of ‘unbounding’ as a way of getting rid of the dualities that inform our way of thinking, that help orientate us in the world and this dangerous narrative we have inherited from a modern and colonial time - this thinking that still inhabits our world. I then thought of ‘unbound’ as a way of living in our world. How can we live ‘unbound’? How can we live in an ‘unbounded’ way? For our lives, for our bodies.

For me, the idea of ‘wildness’ is the most unbounded, the most unconstrained. I did not read Wild Things until hearing this theme. I did not search for it - it found me. The theorist (Jack Halberstem) calls to rethink the way of inhabiting this world and the body that we live in. I found this could be a very interesting, specific but also broad, curatorial framework for different artists with very different practices, with very different contexts coming from very different countries to give contributions and insight on these feelings.

The ideas of ‘wildness’ and the ‘unbound’ point at overcoming the hierarchical and dichotomies that are embedded in the way we are taught to see and understand the world, which reflects in the distribution of power. How modern thinking has considered the relationship of human and nature, feminine and masculine, the civilised and the wild, the artificial and natural. All of these dichotomies, which I think will emerge with the works of these artists, will be put to question.

Alongside Jack Halberstem, I also look at the work of very different authors like Paul B. Preciado, Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Silvia Federici, Maria Longones, Tim Ingold, T. J. Demos, or Graham Harman, as well as by artists themselves working within a similar framework and that are a reference to us, like Otobong Nganka, Marguerite Humeau, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra or Jacolby Satterwhite.

 

This informed the idea of opposing the concept, inherited from modernity, of romanticised ‘wildness’ and the historically idealised ‘life in the forest' or 'the jungle', an idea of nature that is, on the other hand, stigmatised as inferior to the progress of so called civilization. This has been, somehow, a founding epistemology and a trope in modern historical, fictional and scientific literature.. All that “knowledge” that has served to justify the exploitation of natural and human resources, and the erasure of colonised peoples and non-normative bodies and female bodies from the narrative of history.

All the artists (of Tomorrows/ Today) are inspired by a sense of ‘unbounding’ and the liberation from this still hegemonic vision of the world. I believe each one of them is silently envisioning a new political ecology. Also, their individual projects are informed by their varied environments and origins. There are artists from Mexico, Spain, Brazi, India, South Africa, Congo, France..they are spread all around the world. Some works link closely to queer theories, to feminism, decolonial studies while some engage with traditional knowledge, mythologies and iconographies. They can give us incredibly rich insight on these references within the context of “Inhabiting the Wild”.

 

 

MP: As its curator, your own wildness plays a pivotal role in the construction of these dialogues through the artists’ interpretations. If we’re to look at the act of inhabiting the wild within this new epistemology, how do you make sense of wildness? How does this wildness materialise within you and within us?

MF: My childhood was spent in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea on the island of Sardinia, which can be very wild. It is a land known for its glamorous summer parties and beautiful beaches. But there is another side, another face, to this island that only its inhabitants know. It is an island that is austere, that has a very low density, a difficult economy and difficulty managing its resources.

In my upbringing, the passion for arts and culture was, of course, important but it was always second to the importance of understanding the workings of nature.

I have always said I was a “wild” kid. Growing up in a beautiful countryside setting, I spent most of my childhood alongside my sister in the open-air, imagining the trees as our homes preparing arrows with plants to defend ourselves from night animals. We would invent rites and ceremonies to welcome new-born kitties and say goodby to found dead animal bodies which we would bury in our secret graveyard. I was three years old when I saw for the first time a horse giving birth and I was fascinated by it…so this is the “workings” of nature I come from, next to a more aesthetic appreciation of it. Understanding the natural environment and respecting it was very much part of my childhood and is still with me and will be forever. I find myself, today, very close to matters that concern the conservation of nature, the exploitation of its resources and spirituality inspired by natural forces.

To me, the wild is an allegory for the desire of the unknown, the will of knowing in a way that is undomesticated and non-familiar. How can we let the wild inhabit us rather than us conquesting what is unknown, subjugating and exploiting it for our own ruling? How to let wildness play within you when we are unknown to even ourselves? We are constantly changing and always new.

I believe that through the works of the artists selected for Tomorrows/ Today, we are able to reimagine what this wildness could be. With this section (and bringing back to my point of the curator as flexible), I am open to the reshaping of these ideas. I do not wish to apply much of my own dialogue, but rather have this evolving relationship between myself, the artists and the theme to reimagine this wildness.

Rita Sala (1994, Spain) - Ana Mas Projects (Spain)

Cinthia Sifa Mulanga (1997, DRC) - Bode Projects (Germany)

Gabe BC (1982, USA) - C24 Gallery (United States)

Edi Dubien (1963, France) - Galerie Alain Gutharc (France)

Manjot Kaur (1989, India) - Caroline O'Breen (Netherlands)

Natalie Paneng (1996, South Africa) - Galerie EIGEN + ART (Germany)

Lindokuhle Sobekwa (1995, South Africa) - Goodman Gallery (South Africa)

Boemo Diale (2000 , South Africa) - Kalashnikovv Gallery (South Africa)

Marc Herrero (1977, Barcelona) - Le Violon Bleu / Blue Wind Project (Tunisia)

Maria Sosa (1985, Mexico) - No Man's Gallery (Netherlands)

Raphael Sagerra Finok (1985, Brazil) - Reiners Contemporary (Spain)

Marlene Steyn (1989, South Africa) - SMAC Gallery (South Africa)