LAAAAAND. Curating Another Nation

Curated by Francesco Urbano Ragazzi
Introduction: Peter N. Miller, President at American Academy in Rome
Steven Henry Madoff, chair of the MA Curatorial Practice program at the SVA
Moderator: Nikki Columbus, art critic

Participants
Jenny Lin, University of Southern California.
Claire Tancons, Founder and director of EXTEMPORA, Paris.
Dare Turner, Brooklyn Museum.
Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, Italian Fellows at the American Academy in Rome 2025.
Anton Vidokle, artist and founder of e-flux; co-curator of Seoul Mediacity Biennale 2025.

Promoted by the American Academy in Rome in the framework of its inaugural Italian Fellowship for Curatorial Research, a program launched this year thanks to the collaboration with the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creatvity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

In recent years, the global political landscape has undergone unexpected changes. The process of globalization, once seemingly rapid and irreversible, has given way to a resurgence of extreme forms of nationalism. Both old and new conflicts continue to weigh heavily on the movement of people and the circulation of ideas.

LAAAAAND. Curating Another Nation is a panel discussion taking place on Monday, November 10, 2025, at 4pm at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York. Organized by the duo Francesco Urbano Ragazzi and hosted by the MA Curatorial Practice Program at the SVA, the event will explore how art and curatorship can respond to this new and hazardous cultural context. Introduced by Peter N. Miller, President of the American Academy in Rome, a panel of curators and artists is invited to respond to a series of interconnected questions. The discussion is moderated by art critic and curator Nikki Columbus.

In the first session of the panel, Jenny Lin and Dare Turner will draw from their research to explore how artists and curators can engage with the symbols of national identity. Jenny Lin, director of the MA in Curatorial Studies at the University of Southern California and Tsao Family Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy, will examine how Chinese American artists have developed a nuanced sense of citizenship through moving images. Her presentation will take as its starting point Another Beautiful Country, an exhibition and book she produced on the subject. Dare Turner, the Brooklyn Museum’s first full-time curator of Indigenous art, will examine how Native American artists have appropriated the U.S. flag as a strategy of resistance against cultural oppression. Turner’s presentation will trace this trajectory from 19th-century Lakota works to contemporary practices.

In the second session, Francesco Urbano Ragazzi will examine how to curate a national exhibition without falling into nationalist rhetoric. They approach this question through a case study—Identité Italienne, the exhibition curated by Germano Celant at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1981—and through the antagonistic perspective of feminist art critic Carla Lonzi, as expressed in the exhibition catalogue. Following Lonzi’s lead, they will also present their own model, Altérité Italienne, a long-term project developed in dialogue with ten artists, aimed at reweaving the alliance between art criticism and artistic practice.

In the third and final section of LAAAAAND, Anton Vidokle and Claire Tancons will reflect on the role of the national dimension, positioned between the global ambition of art and its need to take root within specific territorial contexts. Anton Vidokle will speak about his work on the recent biennales in Shanghai and Seoul, addressing the urgency of experimental and radical approaches to exhibition making. His lecture will explore alternative curatorial methodologies that resist spectacle, consumption, and narrow frameworks of national representation. Vidokle will also trace connections between his ongoing artistic research into the futuristic philosophy of Russian Cosmism and his current artistic and curatorial projects. Meanwhile, Claire Tancons  shares the trials and tribulations involved in organizing Van Lévé in France, the first collective exhibition dedicated to the emerging generation of Caribbean and Amazonian artists from the French territories of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Guyane, as well as from Haiti, approached from a situated Caribbean standpoint. Tancons puts into perspective questions of artistic autonomy and political sovereignty, connecting a wide transatlantic network of artists and thinkers who, like a new wind, shake the contradictions of France's colonial past. 

Ultimately, is it possible to conceive of national exhibition formats as instruments of resistance, or does their original mission compromise them from the start? In an era when nationalist worldviews are dangerously on the rise, LAAAAAND. Curating Another Nation is an effort to reclaim a conversation about the possible forms of human coexistence.

The symposium will be followed by TUTTAUNANOTTE, An Italian Cinematic Showcase, taking place at e-flux Screening Room on November 13 at 7pm and continuing online on e-flux Film.