Person of The Month: Francesca Verga

Francesca Verga, originally from Milan and with a background of studying and working in various European cities, has been based in Bolzano for over two years, where she shares the role of Artistic Director of Ar/Ge Kunst with Zasha Colah. Ar/Ge Kunst is a Kunstverein whose very name expresses its mission: to form a community of artistic work organized collectively.

How did your passion begin, and how have you pursued it?

My passion for visual arts—and more broadly, for the evocative and revelatory power of images—has its roots, I believe, in a particular encounter: that with an art history teacher during high school. She was the first to teach me that seeing is not a passive act, but a critical process, an exercise of the gaze. Everything else, I would say, grew from there: from a fifteen-year-old girl studying, like many others, from the De Vecchi and Cerchiari textbooks, and approaching art history through the history of places.

At university, paradoxically, I didn’t study art history with the same intensity as I did in high school, but I was driven by a curiosity—almost a hunger—that led me to constantly cross the boundaries of academic knowledge: I visited exhibitions, entered artists’ studios, and sought direct contact with the practice itself.

What have been your most formative experiences?

Probably working for Manifesta 12, the art biennial held in Palermo in 2018, and then Manifesta 13 in Marseille in 2020. Both were intellectual and human training grounds for me, spaces of intercultural dialogue. These experiences were later complemented by a PhD in contemporary art at the University of Amsterdam, which was a time of deep theoretical consolidation.

How did the decision or opportunity to take on the leadership of Ar/Ge Kunst come about?

I had previously collaborated with Zasha Colah, and over time, we developed a relationship that was both professional and personal, based on mutual respect and a shared vision.
So we decided to respond jointly to the public call in 2022 for the artistic direction of Ar/Ge Kunst. This is an institution with a solid and meaningful history (founded in 1985, now celebrating its 40th anniversary), yet one with a rare flexibility, which has allowed it to remain alert and responsive to contemporary artistic research.

It is neither a museum nor a commercial space: as a Kunstverein, Ar/Ge Kunst is rooted in the Central European tradition of art associations dedicated to the promotion, production, and dissemination of contemporary art, with a constant focus on experimentation.

And Bolzano, how would you describe the city in relation to contemporary art?

On a personal level, returning to Italy (with a base in Milan) after living in France was far from an obvious choice. That decision was also shaped by a growing awareness of the unique intercultural identity that this region holds and fiercely preserves.

Bolzano, in particular, is a city that, due to its history, stands at a crossroads of demands, visions, and tensions—often critical, but fertile—that deeply question our present. For this reason, I believe Bolzano offers a depth and plurality of cultural expression in the field of contemporary artistic production that can be found in very few other Italian cities.

Ar/Ge Kunst is led by two women, do you think art is perhaps the form of expression that most transcends gender issues?

I believe contemporary art has the power not so much to transcend rigid categories, but to move through them and challenge them. In this sense, rather than being “beyond” gender, I think art can work through it, deconstructing its assumptions, questioning its conventions, and at times even ignoring it when it no longer serves as a useful interpretative lens.

Personally, I don’t believe in a “female” art or in curatorial work that must necessarily respond to a gender identity. The curatorial gesture, like the artistic one, is layered, situated, and never reducible to a single origin.
For us, the shared directorship has been a way of working based on dialogue, on friction as a generative force. Not an exception, but a conscious professional practice—beyond identity-based categories.

Image: Francesca Verga, Courtesy Francesca Verga