Elisa’s research to date has focused mainly on temporality (she is developing a tool for a taxonomy of temporality: Tense - a program of exhibitions and public projects for a fluctuating institution), including the biennial format, and time-related concepts such as the binaries idleness/production and boredom/necessity for overproduction, the concepts of duration and dormancy, memetics and the generative processes of memory (as personal and collective history), its failures and the interstices between cognitive processes and reality. The relationship between truth, plausibility and fiction, to question the processes of knowledge formation at the basis of contemporary culture and social schemata, as well as the perception of space (architectural, inner spaces and non-places), landscape and the evolution of the idea of travel (trip and journey dualism) are other topics of interest. She is interested in institutions and formats, especially in relation to residency platforms.
Biography
Elisa Tosoni (b. 1981, Italy; lives and works in Zuerich, CH) is an independent curator of contemporary art engaged in the development of new commissions with young international artists, who also works as a chef and occasionally as a art critic and fiction writer. Concurrently, she is founding member of the curatorial collective Alois, started in Milan in 2010, with Barbara Meneghel and Guia Cortassa.
Recent projects include catalogue and exhibition texts, as well as public talks in Zuerich and beyond, and the project one|year|of|curatorial|residencies, a diary (currently on hiatus) following residency experiences at the Nordic Artists’ Centre Dale (Dale, NO), and at Kunsthaus Aussersihl/Rotationatelier (Zuerich, CH). Recent events in Zurich have included the discussion “Contemporary Fairy Tales” at Counter Space (June 2013), with artist E. Habicher, Erarta Gallery director M. Chang and Die Diele curator and artist L. Baumgartner, the catalogue text for the accompanying publication (May 2013), and the exhibition text for SKINS, a project by Nicola Genovese, at Station 21 (June 2013). Upcoming is a lecture and a panel discussion on artistic and cultural mobility, part of the symposium Alter Edge/ Reflections on peripheral dynamics, at Nkd, Dale, NO (18-19 September 2013).
Projects under the Tense headline realized in 2012 are the public discussion W 0°6’ E 18°06’, with Anastasios Logothetis, Mariana Calò and Francisco Queimadela (Glasburen, Stockholm), Dreams’ Time Capsule (artist: Eva Frapiccini, Arkitekturmuseet and Botkyrka Konsthall in Stockholm, public space in Turin). In 2011, the solo show Museo Caneira | la fisica del possible (artist: Eva Frapiccini), at Galleria Alberto Peola, Turin. In the same year, she was one of 12 international young curators selected to take part in the 6th Summer Seminars for Art Curators, Yerevan, Armenia, where she presented the paper Transnational artistic events: on temporality and its repercussions on the local context, for which she received the 2011 Movin’Up scholarship.
Trained as a curator at Stockholm University and as an artist at the University of East London, she has been active in the curatorial field since 2006. Between 2006 and 2008, Elisa worked as a freelance in London, curating group exhibitions and events with emerging artists. There, she contributed to the creation of the artist-run project space Elevator Gallery, where she co-curated (with C. M. Veiderveld and S. R. White) Relocating Absence, including a number of up-coming international artists at their first exhibiton in London, like 2011 Emdash Award winner Anahita Razmi. In 2008, Elisa was curatorial assistant of Raqs Media Collective and D. Isaia at Manifesta 7 for Tabula Rasa, and she collaborated with Bucharest Biennale 3; in 2008-2009, she was exhibitions coordinator and curatorial assistant at Cardi Black Box, Milan; in 2011 curatorial intern at Iaspis, Stockholm.
Her writings and interviews appeared on Arte e Critica and undo.net.