Francesca Verga is a curator, art writer, and researcher, specialising in visual and performing arts from the 1960s to the present. Her research often moves across the borderlands between visual arts, performance, and literature, exploring their mutual intersections and contaminations.
She is the co–artistic director of Ar/Ge Kunst, a Kunstverein in Bolzano–Bozen, together with Zasha Colah, where she has curated the artistic programme since 2023. Recent exhibitions she has curated in Bolzano include: Jonathan Monk.Shine Bright Like a Diamond (2025); Samia Henni. Psychocolonial Spaces (2025); Clemen Parrocchetti. À Jour (2024, curated with Marco Scotini); Anna Scalfi Eghenter. The Fluo Swan (2024); Eva Giolo. Memory Is an Animal, It Barks with Many Mouths (2024); I’m Gone. Do You Remember Me? (2024); Milica Tomić with Ana Bezić (2023); Margherita Moscardini. And Remember that Holes Can Move (2023); Lucia Marcucci. L’Offesa (2023).
She served as assistant curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2024), working with artist Massimo Bartolini and curator Luca Cerizza, and in collaboration with musicians Caterina Barbieri, Kali Malone, and Gavin Bryars, with additional contributions by writers Tiziano Scarpa and Nicoletta Costa.
She holds a PhD from the Department of Art and Culture at the University of Amsterdam (2022), specialising in the history and theory of performing arts, with a dissertation entitled Tainted Memory: Repetition and Reconstructions in Mike Kelley’s Performative Practice, focusing on the artist’s early performances and video works. The dissertation was supervised by art historians Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes (University of Amsterdam) and John C. Welchman (University of California, San Diego), and by historian Rob van der Laarse (University of Amsterdam).
From 2016 to 2020, she served as General Coordinator of Manifesta 12 (Palermo, 2018), where she held a management role coordinating the project team of approximately 75 people, and as Curatorial Coordinator of Manifesta 13 (Marseille, 2020), where she coordinated the curatorial team and liaised with artists.
Over the years, she has curated exhibitions and commissioned and coordinated new productions by artists including: Peter Fend, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Anna Scalfi Eghenter, Eva Giolo, Massimo Bartolini, Samia Henni, Muna Mussie, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Anna Boghiguian, Black Quantum Futurism, Noor Abed, Cameron Rowland, Masatoshi Noguchi, Amol K. Patil, Moe Satt, Nge Lay, Wissal Houbabi, Elena Biserna, Margherita Moscardini, Milica Tomić, Jonathan Monk, Leander Schwazer, Cesare Viel; as well as research projects with the archives of Lucia Marcucci and Clemen Parrocchetti. She also curated the exhibition Muna Mussie, Bologna St.173, Un viaggio a ritroso. Congressi e Festival Eritrei a Bologna, MAMbo (with Archive, 2023); supported the research for the new production by Annamaria Ajmone and Laura Agnusdei, BLEAH!!! (2023); and curated the project with Mårten Spångberg They Returned Every Day at the Same Time to the Same Place (2021), a series of performances that took place in Berlin every day for 26 days, narrated through a podcast. For several years, she also ran the virtual space Liaux, which produced a series of online projects.
She has edited catalogues and written contributions for several art publications. Recently, she co-edited with Frida Carazzato the monograph Lucia Marcucci. Tutto qui? (Bruno, 2025); wrote in the volume Massimo Bartolini. Due qui–To Hear (Quodlibet, 2024); edited and contributed texts to the monograph Margherita Moscardini. Metropolitan Voids Agency (with Zasha Colah, Archive, 2024); and Abécédaire of Fringes (with Lorenzo Rebediani, Vera Scaccabarozzi, and Luca Trevisani), with a written contribution focusing on Carol Rama (Bruno, 2024).
She also initiated, together with Zasha Colah, the Novellas series (designed by Giulia Cordin), which currently comprises twelve publications, one accompanying each exhibition in the programme of Ar/Ge Kunst. The series brings together both her own written contributions on the exhibitions and commissioned short fiction by writers invited to engage with the artistic programme, fostering a dialogue between curatorial practice and literary research.
Since 2016, she has taught courses and delivered lectures. She has collaborated with numerous educational and museum institutions, including EDHEA | École de design et haute école d’art du Valais (Bachelor Fine Arts), Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, Libera Università di Bolzano (Faculty of Design and Arts), University of Milan, IULM University in Milan (within the Master in Art Direction of Cultural Events), NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan, Delfina Foundation, MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma, Barnard College (Columbia University), the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture at the University of Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca.
From 2019 to 2023, she also taught a seminar on curatorial practice and artistic production as part of the Master in Museum Experience Design at IED – Istituto Europeo di Design in Florence.
She was awarded the Italian Council curatorial fellowship (2020), and regularly writes for catalogues and online magazines such as Antinomie.
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