Silvia Franceschini is a curator, researcher and writer. Currently she holds the position of curator of the contemporary at CIVA, in Brussels, which soon will transform into a new idea of an art center at Kanal Pompidou. She is also a collaborator of Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto, where she is part of the faculty of the master in Design, Creativity and Social Practices.
Between 2018 and 2021 Franceschini served as a curator at Z33 — House for Contemporary Art in the city of Hasselt, Belgium where she conceived (among others) the exhibitions Le Déracinement. On Diasporic Imaginations and co-curated Lives of Forms (Kamrooz Aram, Iman Issa) and the research platform Hostile Environment(s). Designing Hostility, Building Refugia.
Her selected curatorial projects include: the research program The Politics of Affinity. Experiments in Art, Education and the Social Sphere, Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella (2016–18); the participation on the curatorial team of The School of Kyiv — Kyiv Biennial 2015; the exhibition, symposium, and educational program Global Tools 1973 — 1975: Towards an Ecology of Design, SALT, Istanbul (2014); the exhibition The Way of Enthusiasts, V-A-C Foundation, 2012. Since 2009 she has been involved in the organization of exhibitions in various institutions including The Moscow Biennale for Young Art; Futura — Center for Contemporary Art, Prague; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.
She is an editor of The Politics of Affinity. Experiments in Art, Education and the Social Sphere, Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto, 2018, and a co-author of Global Tools 1973–1975. When Education Coincides With Life, Nero Publishing, 2019. Her forthcoming publication Curator Without a System. Viktor Misiano: Selected Writings will be published later this year by Sternberg Press.
Franceschini has published extensively on topics of comparative modernities, critical pedagogies and alternative institutional making. Franceschini holds a PhD in Design and Visual Culture from the Polytechnic University of Milan. In her thesis Toward an Ecology of Knowledges: Critical Pedagogy and Epistemic Disobedience in Contemporary Visual Art and Design Practices she explores and discusses in depth historical and contemporary theory and practice in this field. She was a research fellow at the Exhibition Research Lab of the Liverpool John Moores University and at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design.