TrAIN is excited to welcome Dr Federica Martini, Head of the Fine Arts Department at the EDHEA - The Valais School of Art, in Sierre, Switzerland, as Visiting Scholar.

Dr Martini has worked on the history of identity exhibitions and the geopolitics of contemporary art biennials. This research has been included in the books Just Another Exhibition: Stories and Politics of Biennials (2011) and Pavilions: Art in Architecture (2013).

In her study and curatorial work, particular attention is given to how images produce and reveal both areas of visibility and invisibility within the framework of an intersectional feminist approach to contemporary art histories.

She is co-founder of the Blackout Magazine (2017-ongoing) and the SARN Minutes series on artistic research (2011-2017). Since 2019 she’s been a member of EFAP - European Forum for Advanced Practices, where she collaborates with Prof. Paul Goodwin, director of TrAIN, in the Decolonizing Value group.

Federica’s current investigation focuses on art as work at the intersection of aesthetic practices and post-industrial production. In her project, Federica seeks to trace the history of art as research, movements claiming artists’ salaries and cultural precariousness in parallel with post-industrialisation phenomena. Her research is supported by Hes-so Valais Wallis.

Parallel to a PhD at the University of Turin, Federica has collaborated with the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’arte contemporanea (IT) and the MCBA - Musée cantonal des beaux-arts (CH) curatorial departments. Between 2009 and 2017, she was responsible for MAPS - Master of Arts in Public Spheres at the EDHEA (CH).

Dr Federica Martini:

“I am excited at the prospect of spending my sabbatical leave with TrAIN under the coordination of Prof Paul Goodwin. I will have the opportunity to deepen my research questions in dialogue with the London art scene and local archival sources. Paul’s recent curatorial projects ‘W.E.B. DuBois: Charting Black Lives’ (2019-2021) and ‘We Will Walk: Art and Resistance from the American South’ (2020) will provide essential expertise for my reflections on exhibiting archival materials.”

Prof Paul Goodwin (TrAIN Director):

“We are really excited to welcome Federica back to TrAIN following her brief visit in November 2018 to give a TrAIN Open Lecture on “Ways of Non-Seeing” which opened up important questions about how objects and people appear and disappear in art histories. Federica will be spending three months with us to develop her work around art, precarity and labour. This work takes up many of the issues from her previous TrAIN lecture by delving into a range of archives and special collections in London with a focus on neglected feminist histories. In the process Federica will meet and engage with academics, students, artists and curators at UAL and in the wider community. I’m looking forward to hearing about some of her findings and exploring how we can support and collaborate with her exciting research.”