VALENTINA (VAL) RAVAGLIA
she / her, they / them.
Born in Rome, Italy. Lives in London, UK.
ACADEMIC / RESEARCH
2011 – present: PhD candidate, Humanities and Cultural Studies
Institution: The London Consortium / Birkbeck, University of London
Research title: “Exhibiting New Materialisms and New Realisms: the Influence of Contemporary Anti-Anthropocentric Philosophies on 21st Century Curatorial Practices”
2016 – 2018: Contributor to the Horizon research project “The Cartography of Participatory Arts Practice and the Art Museum”, led by Tate Exchange and the University of Exeter
2014 – 2015: Part of the AHRC-funded project “The Arts of Experiment”, School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London
2007 – 2009: MFA in Curating, with merit
Institution: Goldsmiths, University of London
(with Master’s Award Scheme grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council)
2002 – 2007: “Laurea Triennale in Scienze Storico-artistiche” (BA in Art History – Curating pathway)
Institution: Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy
Facoltà di Scienze Umanistiche (Faculty of Humanities)
Final thesis: Subject: History, Theory and Semiotics of Photography
Title: “Fotografia: l’ambigua testimonianza del reale” (“Photography: the ambiguous witness of the real”) – 110/110 cum laude
Additional awards: Erasmus Scholarship at Copenhagen University, Denmark (Jan. – Jun. 2005)
EMPLOYMENT
Aug. 2019 – present: Curator, Displays and International Art, Tate Modern
Oct. 2015 – Jun. 2020: Associate Lecturer for the MRes Art: Exhibition Studies, Central Saint Martins, UAL
Jan. – Mar. 2017: Associate Lecturer in Curating as a Critical Practice, MA in Arts Policy and Management, Birkbeck
Mar. 2012 – Aug. 2019: Assistant Curator – Exhibitions & Displays, Tate Modern
Jan. 2008 – Oct. 2011: Assistant Curator at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London (collection management, displays, research, interpretation, database, archives, copy-editing for catalogues and academic publications, picture library, etc.)
Oct. 2010 – Feb. 2011: Gallery Assistant at Banner Repeater, contemporary art project space and reading room at the Hackney Downs station
Sep. 2008 – Jan. 2009: Translation into Italian of Cy Twombly exhibition catalogue, for Mondadori Electa and Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome
June 2007 – June 2008: Internship at Tate Modern, London – Curatorial Department (for the major exhibitions Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia and Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons)
May – June 2007: Curatorial Assistant, researcher and graphic designer at Centro Studi Cappella Orsini, Rome
Nov. 2002 – July 2003: Internship at Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”
OTHER (FREELANCE) CURATORIAL PROJECTS
2019: Curator for Aura Satz. Dial Tone Drone, Sound Corner, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome, 1 – 31 May 2019
2016: Pre-jury for II edition of Rome’s Media Art Festival‘s open call; exhibition of selected artworks to be held at MAXXI, Rome, 13-17 April 2016
Mar. 2014: Curator for David Raymond Conroy’s performance I Know That Fantasies Are Full of Lies (Take IV) as part of “Present Fictions”, 29 March 2014, David Roberts Art Foundation, London
Dec. 2011: Organiser of circuit-bending workshop with artist Hannibal Andersen, at the Centre for Recent Drawing, as part of the Hatley Residency “Scratches, Traces, Spacings”
Oct. 2009: Part of the curatorial team for Film as a Subversive Art, LUX project space at Zoo Art Fair 2009, 15-19 October 2009
Jan. 2009: Part of the curatorial team for Testing Ground: Contested Ground, group show and experimental curatorial platform, 176 / Zabludowicz Collection, London, 17-18 January 2009; curator of performance Lebensraum by Rastko Novaković, 176 / Zabludowicz Collection, 18 January 2009
Jan. 2008: Co-curator of Photo50 – Untitled Tales, group exhibition for the London Art Fair 2008, 16-20 January 2008
PUBLISHED TEXTS
“Experiments at Bell Labs” and “Live Broadcasts and Satellite Projects”, in Sook-Kyung Lee and Rudolf Frieling (eds.), Nam June Paik, London: Tate Publishing, 2019
“Liquid Moonlight: El Rio de la Luna, 1992-3”, catalogue entry for Rebecca Horn. Body Fantasies, exh. cat., Museum Tinguely, Basel, 5 June – 22 September 2019.
Donald Hyslop, Isabella Magnoni, Valentina Ravaglia (eds.), Hyundai Commission: SUPERFLEX: One Two Three Swing!, exh. cat., Tate Modern, London, 3 October 2017 – 2 April 2018; London: Tate Publishing, 2017.
Contributor to Matthew Gale (ed.), Tate Modern Handbook – revised edition 2016, London: Tate Publishing, 2016
“dOCUMENTA (13): un tour de force epistemologico / an epistemological tour de force”, in Il Libro Nero delle Grandi Esposizioni Periodiche, ed. Eugenia Battisti, New York: Lulu, 2015, pp.36-79
“On Cybernetic Serendipity, Nove Tendencije and the Myth of Computer Art”, in Valentino Catricalà (ed.), Media Art. Towards a New Definition of Arts in the Age of Technology, Pistoia: Gli Ori, 2015, pp.105-11
“On dOCUMENTA (13)”, Prova. Royal College of Art Humanities Research Forum Journal, issue 2, 2014, pp.99-104
“The Supernatural Powers of Plywood”, Tate Etc., issue 27, spring 2013, pp.84-85 (<http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/supernatural-powers-plywood>)
“Apologia del Padiglione: sul concetto di nazione alla 54ª Biennale di Venezia”, in Il Libro Nero della 54ª Biennale di Venezia, ed. Eugenia Battisti, New York: Lulu, 2011, pp.151-71
“Mimmo Paladino. La scultura 1980-2008”, book review, Burlington Magazine, June 2011
“Banner Repeater”, Art Licks 02, London, Spring 2011, pp. 26-27
Contributor to MurmurART.com, “Dialogue” section, 2010
“Metabiennale: sulle crisi d’identità della 53ª Biennale di Venezia e la loro cura”, in Il Libro Nero della 53ª Biennale di Venezia, ed. Eugenia Battisti, New York: Lulu, 2009, pp.61-93
“Notes on Lebensraum”, in Contested Ground, self-published, 2009 (<http://contestedground.blogspot.com/2009/05/lebensraum-living-space-by-valentina.html>)
“When Things Cast no Shadow, or the Exhibition as Nothing in Particular”, in Supercream_Magazine, n. 00, Autumn 2008
Reviews on Curating Discourse blog (<http://curatingdiscourse.blogspot.com>) – 2007-2009
“Neocon. Contemporary returns to conceptual art”, exhibition review, in Luxflux proto-type arte contemporanea, n. 23, 2007
“Next generation – Il futuro dei musei” (“Next generation – The future of museums”), exhibition review, in Luxflux proto-type arte contemporanea, n. 22, 2006
SELECTED CONFERENCES / SYMPOSIA / COURSES / TALKS
Panelist, Reshaping the Collectible: Learning through Change conference, Tate, 14-16 September 2022, ‘Unsettling Inherited Practices’ session, 14 September 2022
Speaker, opening talk with Christina Kubisch and Aura Satz (29 Sep 2018) for the exhibition Mappe Sonore. Micol Assaël, Christina Kubisch e Aura Satz, KunstRaum Goethe-Institut, Rome, 29 Sep 2018 – 08 March 2019
Speaker, Urban Matters: Material Engagements with Communities and Borders in Times of Movement (9th Annual Conference on the New Materialisms & Research Program Religious Matters in an Entangled World), Utrecht University, the Netherlands, 20-22 June, 2018; New Materialist Aesthetics session, 21 June 2018. Title of Paper: “New Materialisms and Curatorial Practices: A Partial Genealogy”
Speaker, Reconstructions, Restagings, Re-enactments: Revisiting Seminal Art Exhibitions in the Twenty-first Century, Futuro House, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, 31 March 2017. Title of presentation: “The Influence of Exhibition Histories
on Tate Modern Collection Displays: The case of the ‘A View from…’ Rooms”
Speaker, Keywords Exchange Seminar with Shannon Jackson, Tate Exchange, 27 October 2016. Webpage
Course leader for Matters of Art and Reality – Artworks as Things, four-week course at Tate Modern, London, 15 February – 7 March 2016. Webpage
Convenor of Curatorial Experiments event series, 8-29 June 2015, School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London. Website
Media Art Festival, Arte & Tecnologia: una nuova scena artistica italiana? roundtable, 26 February 2015, Università Roma Tre
Q&A with David Raymond Conroy as part of Present Fictions, 29 March 2014, David Roberts Art Foundation, London
ICA Friday Salon: Curating the Archive, 7 March 2014, ICA, London
1913 / The Art of Noises / 2013, 12 December 2013, University College Cork, Ireland. Title of paper: “ ‘The vibrations between two objects in relation to each other offer the pleasure of magical thinking’: aural and visual noise in the work of Mike Kelley”
Exploding Objects: A New Scholars Symposium, 10 September 2009, Goldsmiths, University of London. Title of paper: “Aesthetic bricolage: poetics and politics of the stuff of life in contemporary art practices”
VAL RAVAGLIA 