We live in a significant historical turning point to unveil the disconnection of the museology of art, its archival eliteness, and the holding of spheres of power in the hands of a few people and universal narratives in public and private spaces, museums, and white cubes. Such holdings, though, as all spaces of power, contain the very traces of the possibility of their destruction.

How do we integrate or disintegrate these archives with dissenting forces not to speak in place of the other but with the other, to give voice and claim space? How do we provide concrete images to assert the unavoidable violent expression they constantly carry? How can we speak about class, migration, equality, and civic platforms to recuperate or create spaces within art that consciously or unconsciously alter normativity and linearity?

The course will focus on practical and theoretical tools to support structural change.


Antonio Cataldo is a writer and curator. Since August 2018, Cataldo has been the Artistic Director of the Fotogalleriet Foundation in Oslo, an independent and publicly-funded institution, the oldest kunsthalle in the Nordic region devoted to problematizing photographic art and visual culture and contributing to the critical discourses around image production. Cataldo has actively challenged institutional models at the foundation and organized exhibitions with artists Andreas Angelidakis, Bouchra Khalili, Dora García, Daisuke Kosugi, Fin Serck-Hanssen, Brittany Nelson, Julie Poly, and Victoria Verseau. He is the author of Curating Labour (2022) and has edited numerous books, including Conversations on Photography (2021).

Cataldo completed his Master’s degree with philosopher Giorgio Agamben in Venice, Italy, and holds a Ph.D. from ZHdK in Switzerland and the University of Reading in the UK. He chairs the board of The  Association of Norwegian Kunsthalles and seats on the Sandefjord Kunstforening Art Award jury. A Steering Committee Member of the European Assembly of Contemporary Art Centres, over the last two decades, Cataldo held curatorial and other positions at OCA – Office for Contemporary Art Norway; La Biennale di Venezia, where he also co-curated the Nordic Pavilion in 2015; and Iuav, University of Venice.