Agnese Politi

Biography

Agnese Politi is a practice-based PhD researcher at Central Saint Martins and Afterall Research Centre, University of the Arts London. Her research examines institutional governance, infrastructural critique, and collaborative pedagogies within contemporary European art institutions, investigating how contemporary cultural organisations develop and sustain themselves as ecological, social, and political infrastructures.

Research Focus
Her work investigates how practices of commoning can reshape European art institutions marked by colonial-modern hierarchies and exclusion. Moving from institutional critique to infrastructural critique, she examines governance structures, resource distribution, and labour conditions—the material and organisational foundations of cultural production. Her research addresses the urgent need for institutional repositioning in response to the changing sociopolitical landscape and the sector's structural challenges, cultivating the operational capacity and critical attention necessary for systemic institutional transformation. She explores how situated practices and diverse forms of knowledge can be collectively mobilised within institutional contexts, and how institutional forms of solidarity, organisational practices, and coalition can be enacted today. Drawing on curatorial and spatial methodologies and infrastructural critique, her practice develops anti-colonial, ecological, and feminist approaches to institutional transformation, creating operational tools and methodologies for more equitable, sustainable, and collectively governed cultural ecosystems.
Currently Research Fellow at the Centro de Estudios and Museo Tentacular, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2025–) | Collaborating with Museo Tentacular on the Museum of the Commons project developed through the L'Internationale network.


Transnational Network & Collaborations
Her sustained collaborations span internationally recognised institutions and networks including Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), L'Internationale, Casco Art Institute (Utrecht), Arts Collaborative, Archive Books, and Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency. Through these partnerships, she develops collaborative forms of cultural production, situated research, and processes of institutional transformation, contributing to translocal networks and the development of methodological tools for contemporary cultural practice.

Independent Curatorial Practice
As an independent curator and editor, Agnese has developed exhibitions, public programmes, and workshops across the UK, Italy, and Switzerland. Her practice spans curatorial and research contexts, engaging situated pedagogies, commoning, and collective inquiry. She emphasises the development of operational protocols and methodologies for more equitable, sustainable, and collectively governed cultural ecosystems.