Lorenzo Xiques
Curator (IT)
Lorenzo Xiques (Caracas 1983) studied architecture in Naples, where he lives and works. In 2010 he began working as a production assistant for national and international exhibitions in the field of contemporary art, gathering experience as a design officer, construction manager, and social media communication manager. From 2013 to 2017 he worked at Quartiere Intelligente as an artistic director and organizer of musical and cultural events related to sustainable living issues and practices. In 2018 he collaborated with the Fondazione Morra in the opening of Casa Morra - Archives of Contemporary Art, performing multiple functions including that of archivist, and collaborated with Fiorucci Art Trust as coordinator for the production of performances on the territory for several editions of the performance festival Volcano Extravaganza. Since 2018 he has been working as an assistant manager at Fonti Gallery and started a path as an independent curator collaborating with non-profit independent spaces in the Naples area. In the last year he has turned his interest as a researcher and activist toward gender-studies, with a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach that aims to investigate and explore the study of socio-cultural meanings of sexuality and gender identity in the contemporary society around him.--
Why did you become a curator, were you interested in a specific topic and why?
I became a curator in a very spontaneous way, in fact I believe that curating is an attitude, a predisposition to life even before it is a profession. By "attitude" I mean that ability to recognize in the other person a certain content, which you want to welcome, in which you recognize yourself, and for which you want to work together to enhance it. Working together for me is a symptom of mutual generosity and listening. More than a specific topic, I am interested in a response. Every day I am bombarded by messages, advertisements, and propaganda that try to convince me or sell me a version of the facts that often and often does not correspond with the reality and experience I experience firsthand on a daily basis. For example, this happens all the time in the world of marketing, with which we are surrounded and of which the art system is permeated. It is then that I feel the need to tell another version, my own. To respond. I build my narrative through the concrete example of artists who have given a concrete form and thought to what I want to talk about, that is, by inviting them first to engage with me, and later, if a mutual harmony arises, to collaborate.
Have you ever perceived the danger of false inclusion and tokenisation within the art system, where institutions should be at the forefront of inclusivity?
Yes, I perceive it all the time. I think tokenism, although it appears as a neologism in the last decade, has more deep-rooted origins. I remember a Western curator who, whenever he talked about an African artist with whom he had started working in the early 2000s, always uttered the same phrase, "when I discovered him!" automatically crediting himself with the career path the latter had taken. By this I mean that over time I have encountered several Western, white, cis, heterosexual and very privileged curators or gallery owners who have built their careers on themes and issues of other cultures and communities, and have not had the intellectual honesty to recognize their position of extreme advantage in having the tools to be able to impose their proposals on the market and the system, an advantage that is not synonymous with a particular insight or talent, but only with privilege. I think this aspect is indispensable in order to be able to make a coherent reading of the dynamics that have taken place over time, and I think that to omit this is to mystify history. This mystification, which happens constantly even today, and which facilitates the appropriation of other people's content without bringing any concrete power to the other side, is what I identify as neo-colonialism, and certainly as tokenism. Institutions should be in the forefront by offering a woke reading of what is being proposed. One example, in the museum in the city in which I live, a major retrospective is being presented right now of an artist who has based his entire career on being Native American. In 2017 there was a controversy in the United States that swept him up, following several complaints from different Native American organizations accusing him of cultural appropriation. Now, without wanting to get into the merits of the issue, in my city's institution this extremely relevant aspect, which puts in a different light the reading of the artist's entire journey, was not mentioned, neither by the curator nor by the other people who reviewed the exhibition. It is of essential importance that within the curatorial teams in institutions there are people who are able to read and question the projects that are presented in 360 degrees, with respect to the instances that our contemporaneity poses.
Have you ever experienced tokenisation of identities/certain groups as a problem in your practice? Have you questioned that?
I experienced it in a group exhibition that I was invited to curate on queerness. Since I was aware that the exhibition was an attempt to ride the media wave that the fascination with the theme was generating in order to have a media backlash, I took the opportunity to invite five artists who in their practices carried with them strong, sometimes uncomfortable, instances aimed at posing a reflection and critique of the capitalist, competitive, binary and patriarchal system in which they were operating, that of galleries as we know it today. This tactic on that occasion worked because both I and the artists were satisfied with the message sent, which was for me the most important goal to achieve.
Did you develop any organisational or curatorial tactics to overcome this problem and really support the communities that were important to you and your programmes?
My curatorial tactic is mainly to accept failure, because it is part of the process: not all of my visions and scenarios are reflected in the reality I want to construct, and this limitation becomes a resource for building conversations about them.For example, as a queer person, I have often tried to engage queer people within the contemporary art circuits in my city, with little success, because here the system is perceived as elitist, exclusionary. On a couple of occasions I organized events where I invited both artists and activists, and the activists did not show up because they were wary of the context. These have been important growth opportunities for my curatorial practice. Right now I know that I have to create safe environments, that I have to set myself up to listen, and in the meantime I have to invite the people in the system I work with to make an acknowledgement of the privilege they bring with them to deconstruct it from the inside, so that I can lay the groundwork for a horizontal dialogue with those in this system who have not yet been empowered.
What might feminist and queer curating mean to you?
Fluidity, listening and courage.