Curatorial Team
Although it is focused on the island of Giudecca, GAD is not attached to some specific exhibition space but to people, projects, and ideas. Our strength is our collaborative approach to art projects and exhibitions making.
Valentina
Gioia-Levy
Founder & director of GAD Giudecca Art District
Since 2010, she collaborated with a number of cultural institutions, museums, art galleries and festivals around the world like: Kochi - Muziris Biennial (India 2014); Something Else OFF Biennale Cairo (Egypt, 2015/2018), the National Museum of Oriental Art in Rome, the MACRO, Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome.
In 2016 she was guest curator of the XII edition of Dak’Art Biennial (Senegal), under the direction of Simon Njami. She was also curator of the IV edition of LAM360, Land Art Mongolia Biennial and guest curator of Mediations Biennial Poznan (Poland). In 2018 she co-curated “Art & Connectography”, a collateral event of Manifesta 12 promoted by Arts & Globalization Platform.
Since 2015 she also teaches History of Contemporary Art and Architecture; History of Photography and Design at Accademia Italiana, School of Fashion and Design in Rome.
Elena Giulia Abbiatici
Elena Abbiatici is an art critic and curator based in Torino. In 2015 she co-founded Nation25, an artistic-curatorial collective that investigates the processes of political and climatic migration and social transformation. In the context of the Venice Biennale, Nation25 curates the first editions of “The Nationless Pavilion”. Nation25 has exhibited and developed workshops, among others, at: 56th and 57th Biennale d'Arte, 15th Venice International Architecture Biennale, 15th Istanbul Biennale, MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, MAXXI The Independent, Museum of Geology and Paleontology of Florence, Manifesta 12 collateral events (Palermo), Art Africa Fair (Cape Town), Free Home University (Lecce), Auditorium arte (Rome).
She was a guest curator of Something Else OFF Biennale Cairo (Egypt, 2015/2018) and a member of the jury of various awards such as, among others: Re: Humanism, Art and Artificial Intelligence; Media Art Festival MAXXI Award and assistant curator of AWARD TERNA 05.
Naima Morelli
Naima Morelli is an art writer and curator with a focus on contemporary art from the Asia Pacific region. She has been a regular contributor for CoBo Social, Plural Art Mag, Middle East Eye and Middle East Monitor, and she wrote texts to a number of publications and exhibitions catalogs.
She is the author of “Arte Contemporanea in Indonesia, un’introduzione”, a book focused on the development of contemporary art in Indonesia. She also wrote "The Singapore Series", a book about the art system in Singapore, and "This is How it Is", a monograph of Malaysian artist Yeoh Choo Kuan published by Richard Koh Fine Arts.
As a curator, her practice revolves around creating meaningful connections between Asia, Europe and Australia. Between other relavant experiences, she curated exhibitions and talks of emerging Australian artists in Rome, coordinated the logistics for the exhibition SHOUT! Indonesian Contemporary Art at MACRO in 2014 and she curated “Indonesia – Orienti Visioni Contemporanee” a series of screening of video art in Villa Ada’s Art Project Space in 2015.
Melania Rossi
Melania Rossi is an art critic and curator based in Rome. She has curated exhibitions in public and private spaces both in Italy and abroad, and large-scale projects such as "Jan Fabre. Spiritual Guards" in Florence; "Ecstasy & Oracles" for the Manifesta Biennale in 2018. She has conceived and co-curated exhibitions in the context of international festivals and biennials such as Romaeuropa Festival and Manifesta Biennials in Palermo and Marseille. Since 2013 she collaborates with the Belgian artist Jan Fabre, both as curator and as project manager. As an author, she was responsible for the creation of several exhibition catalogs and contributed to numerous art publications and art magazines. Always interested in the contamination of languages, she has created art programs for Italian television, including two documentaries on Jan Fabre for Sky Arte HD.
Previuosly, she was also a visiting professor at the Faculty of Literature in Florence with a course on "artistic dissemination".
Advisory & Curatorial Board
Besides our curatorial team who is working actively on several projects, we also have an advisory and curatorial board composed of international professionals who cooperated with GAD or are simply supporting and endorsing our activities. The advisory board will be constantly implemented thanks to the suggestions of its senior members and it will include other curators and directors of artistic institutions and museums, collectors and patrons of art, university professors and relevant personalities from the world of art.
Alfons Hug
Hug is a curator, critic and exhibition organizer. In the 1990s Hug was head of the Visual Arts Department at "Haus der Kulturen der Welt" Berlin. Since the mid-1980s he has worked as director of Goethe-Institutes in Lagos, Medellín, Brasília, Caracas, Rio de Janeiro and Singapore. Hug is currently director of Goethe-Zentrum in Baku.
Between many other shows he curated : the 11th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2018); the 3rd Bienal de Montevideo (2016); the Latin American Pavilion, IILA, Venice Biennial (2015); the 2nd. Bienal of Montevideo (2014); the Latin American Pavilion, IILA, Venice Biennial (2013)​; the 1st. Bienal of Montevideo (2012); the Latin American Pavilion, IILA, Venice Biennial (2011); the Bienal de Curitiba, Brazil (2011); the Bienal del Fin del Mundo, Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina (2009); the Brazilian Pavilion, Venice Biennial (2005); the 26th Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (2004)​; Brazilian Pavilion, Venice Biennial and 4th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2003); the 25th Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (2002)
Alnoor Mitha
Mitha is the founder and director of Asia Triennial Manchester since 2008, Europe’s only Triennial dedicated to contemporary visual art on the theme of Asia. He is a Senior Research Fellow (Asian Cultures), Manchester School of Art, and the research Centre leader for Asian Cultures. He is an adjunct Professor at Beaconhouse university, Lahore, Pakistan and a trustee for the Manchester Crafts & Design Centre. He has recently become a steering committee member for the new Centre for the Race & Racism Studies at MMU. He has also been appointed to the prestigious, Peer Review College - UKRI AHRC.
He was previously founder and director of Shisha (2001–2011), the international agency for contemporary South Asian crafts and visual arts. Between many exhibitions he curated Anish Kapoor solo exhibition at gallery F15, Moss, Norway. In 2016 he was the curator of Colombo Art Biennial titled “Conceiving Space.
Simon Njami
Njami was the artistic director of12th and 13th edition of the Dak'Art Biennale in 2016 and 2018. He previously curated numerous exhibitions of African art and photography, including Die Andere Reise/The Other Journey: Africa and the Diaspora, Kunsthalle Krems, Vienna (1996), Les Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie, Bamako Photography Biennial, Mali (2001 and 2009), Up and Coming, ARCO, Madrid (2003), Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent, Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf (2004–07, traveling to London, Paris, Tokyo, and Johannesburg), and As You Like It, the first African contemporary art fair in Johannesburg (2008), and was also co-curator with Angolese artist Fernando Alvim of the first African Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007). His latest shows are A Collective Diary (Tel-Aviv, 2010), a solo show of Cameroonian artist Bili Bidjocka (Paris, 2010) and A Useful dream (Brussels 2010).