About Costellazione

Costellazione (Constellation) is a digital project by art historian Dr. Tenley Bick (Assistant Professor of Global Postwar and Contemporary Art, Florida State University), dedicated to mapping new directions in contemporary Italian art and activism through freely accessible bilingual programming with field-changing artists, both emerging and well-known. Each program focuses on one work of art of the artist's choice. Founded in the fall of 2020, partly in response to the absence of multi-ethnic and especially afrodiscendenti Italian artists in museums, galleries, and exhibitions of Italian art, Costellazione seeks to expand and deepen our knowledge of contemporary Italian artists' research; to serve as a platform for creative azione (action); and to constellate a new community for dialogue, research, and exchange in our current moment of distance and global crisis. It introduces emerging figures alongside maestre/i with shared affinities in the exploration of resistance, activism, and identity in Italy and its cultural geographies, past, present, and yet to come.

Acknowledgments from the Founder: This project would not be possible without the work and generosity of the artists it features. My sincerest thanks to them and to visitors of the site. Grazie infinite.

Tenley Bick, PhD (she/her) is an art historian and Assistant Professor of Global Contemporary Art in the Department of Art History at Florida State University. Her research focuses on European (especially Italian) and African art (continental and diasporic), with interest in the history of Italian colonialism. Her work on Italian art focuses on Arte Povera, internationalism, and politics in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as contemporary art, race politics, and coloniality. Her current book project, Michelangelo Pistoletto: Figuration and Cultural Politics, examines the work of the contemporary Italian artist within the politicized cultural contexts of post-WWII Italy and Europe, and against the broader geopolitical horizon for art of the 1960s. Her research also includes a second book-length project in development on contemporary art and Italian colonial history. She is editing an upcoming special journal edition of Palinsesti, no. 11 (2024), entitled "'Italianicity is not Italy': Questioning COntemporary Italian Art History" / "'L'Italianità non è l'Italia': Riesaminando la storia dell’arte contemporanea italiana." Read more here: https://teseo.unitn.it/palinsesti/announcement.

For more on Bick and her publications, visit: www.tenleybick.com.

Land Acknowledgment: I am an art historian based in Tallahassee, Florida, where I live and work. My work takes place on land that is the ancestral and traditional territory of the Apalachee Nation, the Muscogee Nation, the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida, and the Seminole Tribe of Florida. I pay respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to their descendants, to the generations yet unborn, and to all Indigenous people. I extend my gratitude as I live and work as a humble and respectful guest upon their territory.