Coimbra Session

What is art's role in addressing gender discrimination? Despite the many initiatives taken to generate structural changes, gender discrimination is still thriving, and much still needs to be done to enhance women's equality in the arts and society. If art aims to have a real impact in the commitment to gender equality, what's its role in addressing this issue as a distinct practice? How can we enhance women's fundamental contribution to contemporary culture? In what ways can we explore the notion of femininity in the arts?

Bruna Roccasalva is Artistic Director of Fondazione Furla. At Fondazione Furla, she  curated a series of exhibitions organized in collaboration with Italy’s foremost art institutions: Nairy Baghramian. Misfit, (2021) with GAM-Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan (2021); Haegue Yang: Tightrope Walking and Its Wordless Shadow with La Triennale, Milan (2018); and the performance-based program Time after Time, Space after Space (2017-2018) with the Museo del Novecento, Milan. She was Editor in Chief of L'Officiel Art magazine (2016-2019) and Editor of Peep-Hole Sheet (2009-2016). Prior to joining Fondazione Furla in 2016, she was Founding Director and Curator of Peep-Hole Art Center, an independent contemporary art center in Milan, which she co-founded in 2009. At Peep-Hole she co-curated solo exhibitions of artists and she developed projects in partnership with several institutions, such as Kunsthalle Zürich, the Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, CAC Centre d’Art Contemporain, Brétigny, Portikus, Frankfurt, Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, FRAC Champagne Ardenne, Reims and CAG, Vancouver. She was Head of Publications at Mousse Publishing (2010-2011) and Associate Curator at GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo (2003-2009), where she collaborated on solo and group exhibitions and worked on several publications, such as monographs by Alighiero Boetti and Giulio Paolini. She taught History of Contemporary Art at the IED-Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan (2006). 

Ana Cristina Cachola (1983, Elvas, PT) is an independent curator, university professor and writes regularly for artistic and academic publications. She has a degree in Communication Sciences from Universidade Nova de Lisboa and a Master in Cultural Management from Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP). She holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from UCP, research funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology. In 2016, she obtained an individual post-doctoral fellowship, from the same Foundation. She is part of the team leading the European project 4Cs: from Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture, supported by Creative Europe. She has curated solo and group exhibitions in institutions such as MAAT, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Galeria da Boavista (Lisbon), 50 Golborne (London), La Nave (Madrid), among others. She is artistic director of the project Community while Immunity and founded and directs the feminist curatorial program Quéréla, in Lisbon, since 2020.

Using painting, photography and experimental video to portray identity processes, blackness, memory and healing, Filipa Bossuet is the culmination of an interest in the arts, journalism and everything that makes her feel alive. She graduated in Communication Sciences, is a student in the Migrations, Inter-ethnicities and Transnationalism master's program, and is a member of the Black Arts Union. Since the professionalization of her artistic work, in 2020, she has directed and edited the video about the performance "Coronas in the Sky, Not a Manifesto! an essay on Afrofuturism" by Melissa Rodrigues; participated in the group exhibitions: "Linguagens e Identidades" at Rama em Flor Festival, "Kilombo" at Espaço Alkantara curated by Aurora Negra and "Linha Imaginária" at MU.SA (Sintra Arts Museum), in 2021. In the same year, she illustrated the book "Sempre que Acordo" by Lara Mesquita, cover of the 1st edition of the New Female Authorship Dramaturgy Award, by the Cepa Torta Theater Company. She also developed the concept MANKAKA KADI KONDA KO which branches out, in a first moment, into her first independent solo installation, in a 360º virtual context, of immersion into the artist's physical and mental creative space. In 2022, the concept develops into a second ramification, in a physical installation, present in the exhibition "Interferences" at MAAT.