Every academic year, S.M.A.K., Ghent University and Curatorial Studies at KASK & Conservatory School of Arts jointly organise the Curatorial Lectures series.
During this lecture, Antonia Alampi will lead us through a curated exploration of her career, spanning from her early projects in Beirut and Cairo (2012-15) to her later involvement with initiatives like SAVVY, Future Climates, and Toxic Commons. As a cultural organiser, curator, and now director of the Spore Initiative, Alampi's professional path has been characterized by collaborative efforts with artists and professionals from diverse backgrounds. She has worked within socially sensitive, politically engaged, and infrastructurally vulnerable yet resilient organizations, all committed to advancing social, political, and environmental justice. These endeavors support alternative ways of understanding the earth and its inhabitants, often marginalized or suppressed throughout history.
Antonia Alampi is a curator, researcher, and writer originally from Southern Italy, currently residing in Berlin. Since mid 2020 she is the founding director of Spore Initiative, co-founded by Hans Schoepflin and Osvaldo Sanchez and is a member of the curatorial team for the quadrennial Sonsbeek 2020-2024. Prior to this, she served as the Co-Artistic Director of SAVVY Contemporary.
Between 2017 and mid-2019, she was curator of Extra City Kunsthal in Antwerp, with a three-year program focused on the manufacturing of the notion of European Citizenship. She co-founded, together with Caroline Ektander, Simone Müller, the Hazardous Travels group from the Rachel Carson Center and SAVVY Contemporary, a research platform - Toxic Commons - that brings together cultural practitioners and academic researchers in the sciences to address environmental injustice by unraveling the complex nature of toxicity.
In 2016, she initiated together with Iliana Fokianaki the research project Future Climates and from 2012 to 2015, she was a curator of Beirut in Cairo.
Spore is a cultural initiative facilitating programs on regenerative ecological practices through experiences of intergenerational learning. The institute explores common grounds that exist between communities, organizations, and people who may be geographically or culturally far from one another but are linked through practices of care for the earth.
