Raffaella PERNA

Raffaella Perna is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of Catania (RtdB). Her studies have focused on the relationships between art and photography in the XIX and XX centuries, and on the links between art and feminism, on gender issues and on the study of women’s contribution to art, photography, and art criticism in the 1960s and 1970s, in Italy and North America. A further line of her research has focused on the artistic context in Rome from the second half of the 1950s to the 1970s. She obteined the National Scientific Qualification, Academic Discipline 10/B1, associate in 2017. She earned her PhD in Art History in 2014 at the Sapienza University of Rome, where she was Research Fellow in 2015-2016 and 2018-2019. She was temporary lecturer in Contemporary Art History at the University of Macerata from 2016 to 2018. In 2019 she taught in the course “XIX and XX Century Art History” in the Fashion Studies Master at Sapienza University of Rome and in 2020 in the Master “Foundation Year” of the same University. From 2017 to now she teaches in the Master in Cultural Diplomacy at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. She is member of the editorial board of the journal “Arabeschi. Rivista di Studi su letteratura e visualità” (Fascia A) and from 2016 to 2020 was member of the editorial staff of the journal of History of Contemporary Art “PianoB” (Fascia A). From 2018 she is the Director of the editorial series “Quaderni della Fondazione Echaurren Salaris” (Postmedia Books, Milan). She is member of the Scientific Committee of the Filiberto and Bianca Menna Foundation (Salerno), and from the 2019 she is the curator of the “Art and Feminisms” column published by the contemporary art journal “Flash Art”. In 2017 she won the Award for photographic criticism at the 24th edition of “Trofei internazionali della fotografia”, Benevento. She is Pincipal Investigator of the research project “L'arte di Marisa Busanel, attraverso le opere, la critica, le fonti documentarie”, Starting Grant Line, University of Catania. She participates in the Research Project “Audience, Remediation, Iconography and Environment in Contemporary Opera”, Principal Investigator Stefania Rimini, University of Catania (2020-2022). In 2018 she had an annual collaboration agreement with Fondazione Prada, Milan, as collaborator in charge of carrying out historical-artistic research to support the curatorial department of the Foundation in organizing the exhibition on Jannis Kounellis (Ca' Corner della Regina, Venice 2019). In 2016 she was the winner of the call for tenders for funding of research with the project “L'opera di Cesare Tacchi negli anni Sessanta e Settanta: fotografie, performance, progetti”, the Sapienza University of Rome and in 2012 she won the call for tenders for funding of research with the project “Ketty La Rocca: l'opera fotografica e video”, the Sapienza University. Issues relating to the acquisition, conservation, promotion and valorisation of photography are at the centre of two conferences: “Per un museo della fotografia a Roma” (2011) and “Quale museo della fotografia per Roma?” (2013), curated with I. Schiaffini, respectively held at the Faculty of Architecture of Roma Tre University and at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the Sapienza University of Rome. In 2014 she also co-curated the conference “Etica e fotografia: potere, ideologia e violenza dell’immagine fotografica”, the Sapienza University of Rome and in 2019 the conference “Le forme del conflitto. Immagine, parola, politica nell'arte italiana dagli anni Sessanta”, with C. Salaris, Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome and Echaurren Salaris Foundation. She has participated in numerous national and international conferences, among them: “Fotografia e Femminismo nell'Italia degli anni Settanta. Rispecchiamento, indagine critica, testimonianza”, Museo Fotografia Contemporanea (MuFoCo) (2020); The 20^th Conference of the Austrian Art Historians Association (VöKK), “At the Threshold. Liminality in theory and art historical practice”, Academy of Fine Arts di Vienna (2019); XXV International Conference of Film Studies, “Cinema delle donne e media contemporanei: estetiche, identità e immaginari”, Università di Roma Tre (2019); International Conference Performativity: Pasts, Presents, and Futures. Queer Practices in the History of Art Since 1900, Università degli Studi di Pisa (2019); “Fotografia e pittura. Relazioni a confronto”, Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, 2018; “Arte fuori dell'arte. Incontri e scambi fra arti visive e società negli anni Settanta”, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan (2016); “Alberto Burri nell’arte e nella critica”, Gallerie d’Italia Piazza Scala, Milan 2015; “Piero Manzoni 1933 – 1963”, Palazzo Reale, Milan in collaboration with The University of Milan La Statale and Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan (2014); the International Conference “L’esperienza del luogo: Italian photography, writing and landscape. Luigi Ghirri, his contemporaries, his legacy”, University of Leicester (2014); “La vergogna/The Shame. Sensibilia 5. Colloquium on Perception and Experience”, Austrian Historical Institute at the Austrian Forum of Culture, Rome (2011). She was selected among the speakers of the 35th CIHA World Congress, Comite International d'Histoire de I'Art, entitled Motion Migrations, São Paulo, Brazil (August 2021). She organized and participated to numerous lectures and seminars on contemporary art and photography in XIX and XX centuries: “Donne e fotografia negli anni Settanta. Lotte, trasformazioni, conquiste”, seminar, University of Milan (2020); “Fotografia e femminismo”, seminar, University of Catania (2020); “Ricerca d'archivio e pratica curatoriale”, conference, University of Bologna (2020); “Talk Gender”, cycle of conferences, British School at Rome (2019); “L'universo poetico di Ketty La Rocca. Dalle parole ai gesti. Riflessioni a margine”, round table, University of Ferrara (2018), “Contrappunti. L'arte a Roma nel 1968”, cycle of conferences, Museo di Roma in Trastevere (2018); “Women Out of Joint: il femminismo è la mia festa”, festival, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome (2018); participation in the cycle of conferences titled “Osservatorio sulla fotografia”, University of Trento (2017); speaker at the study day “Fotografia e pittura. Relazioni a confronto”, Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome (MACRO, 2017); “Dialoghi sul paesaggio. Le copertine di Luigi Ghirri”, conference, Study Centre and Communication Archive (Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione, CSAC) Parma (2017); “L’altro sguardo: artiste e fotografe degli anni Novanta”, cycle of conferences promoted by the Higher Institute of Photography and Integrated Communication in Rome, in collaboration with the Sapienza University of Rome (2016); participation in the conference “Comunicare la differenza sessuale: arte, fotografia e femminismo”, Higher Institute for Artistic Industries, Urbino (2016); speaker at the cycle of conferences “Lo sguardo oltre il confine. Un viaggio tra le immagini”, Mercati di Traiano, organized by the Department of Culture and Sport – Superintendence of Cultural Heritage of the City of Rome (2015); “Arte, fotografia e femminismo in Italia negli anni Settanta”, participation in the context of the Piccolo Festival dell’Arte, Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, University of Trento (2013); organization of the cycle of conferences “Fotografia, identità e genere: incontri d’autore” held at the Higher Institute of Photography and Integrated Communication in Rome, in collaboration with the Sapienza University of Rome (2013); “Fotografia e arte italiana degli anni '60”, conference, Museum of Photography of the Politecnico in Bari (2013); participation in the context of a cycle of seminars titled “Leggere la fotografia come testo e come documento”, organized by Barbara Cinelli and Antonello Frongia, Department of Historical and Artistic Studies, Archaeology and Conservation, Didactic College of Cultural Heritage Studies, Università di Roma Tre, 2012. She has curated and co-curated several exhibitions, devoted to contemporary art, photography, women artist and feminism, among them: “Donne al lavoro. Mostra fotografica dal fondo di Noi Donne”, Archivia – Casa Internazionale delle Donne, Rome (2020); “The Unexpected Subject 1978 Art and Feminism in Italy” (Frigoriferi Milanesi, Milan 2019), “L’altro sguardo. Fotografe italiane 1965-2018” (Triennale, Milan and Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome), “Ketty La Rocca 80. Gesture, Speech and Word”, 17^th Biennale Donna, Contemporary Art Pavilion, Ferrara (2018), “Paola Di Bello. Fotografie e video” (Lisbon, Italian Institute of Culture, 2016), “La Grande Allusione: 1974-2015. I Ruoli del femminile di Marcella Campagnano, ieri e oggi” (Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea, University of Rome La Sapienza, 2015); “Grandi fotografi a 33 giri”, dedicated to the relationship between artistic photography and the covers of albums from the 1950s to today (Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome 2010); “Synchronicity. Record Covers by Artists” devoted to the graphic design of album covers from the 1950s to 2010 (Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome 2010 and 2012). In 2016 she was member of the scientific board for the exhibition “Roma Pop City 1960-1967”, Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome (MACRO).