Curae

Niccolò Fano (Rome,1985) holds a BA in Photography at the University for the Creative Arts, a Masters degree in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins and a Creative Ventures MBA scholarship from London Business School. In the UK he has taught at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London and the UCA in Farnham.
He currently lives in Rome where he is the founder and director of Matèria. Based in the neighbourhood of San Lorenzo, Matèria opened its doors to the public in 2015. The gallery proposes an exhibition programme that touches upon all aspects of Contemporary Art.
Niccolò is currently Program Director at the Rome Institute of Photography (ISFCI) and has taught as visiting lecturer for Officine Fotografiche Roma, Rome University of Fine Arts, IED and Luiss Business School.

Tristan Lund is an independent curator and art advisor specialising in photography.

Since 2014 Tristan has curated The Incite Project, a leading private collection of photojournalism, documentary photography and photographic art based in the UK.

He co-curated the 2021 edition of the Approche art fair, Paris and from 2017- to 2019 he was curator of Photo London art fair's Discovery section dedicated to young galleries. Prior to this, he was Director of Michael Hoppen Contemporary, London from 2010 - to 2014.

(1984) She is an independent curator and art historian based in Rome. Her undergraduate degree is in Art History from the University of Pisa. Her curatorial focus is on exhibitions that feature site-specific works which reexamine unconventional spaces. She teaches at Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and at Istituto Pantheon of Milan/Rome and she is professor at IED (European Institute of Design), international Master in “Curatorial Practice” 2020-21. She is Art Advisor of American Academy in Rome. She is co-founder and director of the project There Is No Place Like Home which was awarded the Artribune Prize for Contemporary Art in 2017. Benassi is also the curator of ALT - The contemporary Art program of the national newspaper “Il Manifesto”. She is curator of the art residency “Ritratto a mano”. She is editor of the Italian art publications Rivista Segno and Exibart. She has collaborated with different institutions and associations among which Tang Contemporary Art, Hong Kong, Museo Laboratorio della Mente, Swiss Institute in Rome, Post Ex, artQ13 Rome; Fondazione Lac o Le Mon Lecce; MAMbo Bologna; Follemente Festival Teramo; Italian Cultural Institute London. She has also edited with many international publishers such as NERO, Viaindustriae, Palombi, among others.

Vasco Forconi is an independent curator, researcher, and editor based in Rome and Stockholm. He is currently curatorial assistant at CuratorLab, Konstfack University, Stockholm, and teaches Curatorial Studies at NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Rome. His recent curatorial projects include: “A Deeper Splash”, Port Tonic Art Center, Les Issambres (2022), “Night Shade”, Farnesina Collection, Rome (2021), “Per un Prossimo Reale”, Pastificio Cerere Foundation, Rome (2021), “Esposizione di frutta e verdure”, Matèria, Rome (2019), “Festa Franca. Forare il tubo”, co-curated with Cecilia Casorati, Franca (2019), “What is the collection telling us?”, Tensta konsthall, Stockholm (2019), “Shoegaze”, series of new commissions, Italienska kulturinstitutet, Stockholm (2019-2020), “Italiani brava gente”, Fondazione VOLUME!, Rome (2018), “A Messy Knot (in motion pictures)”, The Bioscope, Johannesburg (2018). In 2020 he was recipient of the Premio Mosca (MiBAC, V-A-C Foundation, Moscow). He recently co-edited the first Italian translation of “The Undercommons” (Archive Books/Tamu Edizioni, 2021), “Curating Beyond the Mainstream”, and “Assuming Asymmetries. Conversations on Curating Public Art in the 1980s and 1990s” (Sternberg Press/Konstfack Collection, 2022).

Celeste Baracchi (b. 1991, Verona) holds a BA from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and a MLitt in Modern and Contemporary Art and Art World Practice from the University of Glasgow. While in London, she worked for a number of commercial art galleries in various roles as well as for the Photography Department at Phillips. Celeste carried out a major cataloguing project for Hamiltons Gallery, which consisted in cataloguing the complete photographic work and archive of Don McCullin, one of the world’s pre-eminent photojournalists. While at Richard Saltoun, she worked across various projects as artists liaison as well as sales with a particular focus on the online. This led to her current role at Artsy where she advises and helps galleries to establish a stronger online presence.

Luca Santese (1985) is an Italian photographer.

He was born and grew up in the Milan area. He studied at Monza's Art institute and at the Fine Arts Academy of Brera in Milan. While attending the academy he worked as an assistant in Alex Majoli's studio.

In 2008 he launches and became a member of Cesura group. Cesura are a photographer's group representing projects. The concept of the project is to create a strong and independent group capable to work on quality and artistic research.

In 2009 he won Photolucida Critical Mass International new talent photographers Award.

In 2010 he was selected for the World Press Photo prize with the project "Detroit 2009-2010" and in the same year, he exposed for the first time the project "Found Photos in Detroit" at Le Bal Space of Paris, to which followed exhibitions at Kulturhuset of Stockholm, at the OGR of Turin and at the MoCP of Chicago and numerous further exhibitions in many countries in the world.

In 2012, Found Photos in Detroit book was published. This book has collected seven nominations as "the best photographic book of the year" and in 2014 was put in the volume "Photobook: A History Vol: III", edited by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger. Parr and Badger consider the book one of the 200 best books of photography post world war two.

His work has been published in numerous international magazines and his projects have been exhibited in Europe, Asia and the United States.

Art historian (MA) and Conservator (PhD) focused on contemporary art, with experience in collection management, research, curatorship, and in the organization of training courses for museum professionals.

Significant work experiences include the current one at MAXXI, National Museum of XXI Century Art in Rome, working for the Photographic Collections (4 years), and the 6 years consultancies at ICCROM, the International Centre for the Study of Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage, with the development and organization of training courses in Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Guatemala, South Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and in Rome.

Previous work experience includes other institutions such as the Dallas Museum of Art, Texas and the IILA – Italian-Latin American Institute, and private contemporary art galleries. Currently continues to work as a consultant both in the public and private sectors and pursues research activities connecting art history, conservation, museology, and collections management.

Holds a master’s degree in contemporary art history and a PhD in Conservation of Contemporary Art, with the thesis The public and contemporary artworks: an analysis of the relationship between the education and conservation functions of the museum, from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain (June 2020).