Conserving the Future is the book that bears witness to twenty-five years of curating contemporary art in the same place: the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice.
It is a long time in which curator Chiara Bertola has been able to observe the metamorphoses and rebirth of this ancient palace, which, through the different visions of the artists projected into its spaces, have made it many places each time.
Conserving the Future is a program and a working method based on the relationship with time, the past, and history because in every project the historical place becomes a subject that asks to be seen, recognised, listened to and then opened to dialogue with present.
Chiara Bertola recounts, in a single text that trace the site-specific exhibitions from 1997 to 2022, the questions, thoughts, and discoveries made together with the artists living with them the creative process. She defines a curatorial line beyond the canonical and consolidated confines, focused on the concepts of precariousness and instability.
The perception of a time never closed, the intuition of hidden possibilities behind established meanings and the search for margins of meaning revealed beyond the usual confines become the keys to open up unexpected poetic worlds.
With George Adéagbo, Margarita Andreu,
Giovanni Anselmo, Stefano Arienti, Lothar Baumgarten, Giuseppe Caccavale, Jean-Baptiste Decavèle,
Elisabetta Di Maggio,
Jimmie Durham,
Haris Epaminonda,
Yona Friedman,
Luigi Ghirri, Mona Hatoum,
Paolo Icaro, Ilya & Emilia Kabakov,
Joseph Kosuth,
Marisa Merz, Maria Morganti, Isamu Noguchi, Roman Opałka,
Giulio Paolini,
Michelangelo Pistoletto, Remo Salvadori, Mauro Sambo,
Mariateresa Sartori, Park Seo-Bo, Anita Sieff, Kiki Smith,
Danh Vo, Andrea Zanzotto,
Qiu Zhijie.
Chiara Bertola (born 1961 in Turin) is Curator of Contemporary Art Program at the Querini Stampalia Foundation in Venice since 1999. She was artistic director at the Hangar Bicocca in Milan from 2009 to 2012, creator and curator of the FURLA Art Prize, curator of the Venice Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale, 2007, co-curator of the 15th edition of the Rome Quadriennale, 2008, President of the City of Venice's Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, 1996-1998. Founding member of Love Difference (2000), Artistic Movement for an "Intermediterranean Politic" (together with
Michelangelo Pistoletto and others), she has curated many exhibitions both in Italy and abroad.
