First Encounters. Collective Activation of the Chiara Fumai Archive

From 29 October 2026

Manica Lunga, second floor, CRRI – Castello di Rivoli Research Institute

CRRI presents for the first time a new project on the Chiara Fumai Archive. A collaboration with the University of Turin and Mucho Mas!

Displayed in the storage of the CRRI – Castello di Rivoli Research Institute, First Encounters is a project that for the first time opens the Chiara Fumai Archive to the public. The Archive is a collection of materials that belonged to Chiara Fumai (Rome, 1978 – Bari, 2017), a performance artist whose practice is rooted in the reworking of feminist aesthetics, mediumistic practices, and musical subcultures.

Starting from the study of the Archive held at the CRRI, the project took the form of activation practices and a co-curation workshop. By involving multiple participants with diverse, non-specialized skills, the workshop drew inspiration from the techniques of remixing, montage, and mapping that inform Fumai’s work and research.

Visible through the glass wall enclosing the CRRI, First Encounters presents a selection of personal objects and stage props, texts from the artist’s library, and transparencies with notes and drawings left by Fumai on the pages of her books. These traces guide the audio component of the project: a reading aloud interspersed with songs from Fumai’s playlists, drawn from the extensive musical section of the collection. The curatorial choices as a whole offer a relational reading of the archival materials.

First Encounters. Collective Activation of the Chiara Fumai Archive is part of OCCULTA – Observatory for the Collective Care of Techno-Archival Languages.

The co-curation workshop, led by Gabriella Dal Lago and Irene Pipicelli, involved Anita Abbà, Violetta Bellocchio, Francesca Carlorecchio, Sabrina Capotorto, Claudia Conte, Letizia Massa, Elio Pezzarossa, Isabella Ravera, Nolwenn Salaün, Anastasia Tonelli.

First Encounters. Collective Activation of the Chiara Fumai Archive is in collaboration with Luca Vianello, Silvia Mangosio, Mucho Mas!.

Bio

OCCULTA – Observatory for the Collective Care of Techno-Archival Languages is a science communication project / public engagement project funded by the Department of Humanities at the University of Turin. It was conceived and scientifically directed by Cristina Voto, a researcher in the Department, and developed in collaboration with Francesca Pegan, who undertook study and research activities focusing on the Chiara Fumai Archive. OCCULTA aims to develop participatory tools through which to imagine alternative practices of memory and the sharing of archival heritage.

The Department of Humanities at the University of Turin is a research and educational institution dedicated to the humanities. Through teaching and research, Third Mission initiatives and public engagement activities, it promotes the production and dissemination of knowledge and develops collaborations with academic and scientific institutions at national and international level.

Mucho Mas! is a space and curatorial project dedicated to photography and contemporary image-making. Through exhibitions, projects and cultural initiatives, it presents Italian and international artistic practices that question and reinterpret the visual languages of the present.

The Chiara Fumai Archive, dedicated to Chiara Fumai (Rome, 1978 – Bari, 2017), consists of numerous materials from the artist’s archive, including objects, working documents, and the clothes Fumai wore during her performances or in photographic works and videos. There are also personal objects and a collection of vinyl and CDs dating back to the years in which Fumai worked as a DJ. This differentiated corpus constitutes a fundamental source of research to reconstruct Chiara Fumai’s thoughts, her studies, and the symbols and references in her artworks. The Chiara Fumai Archive was donated in 2018 by Liliana Chiari, the artist’s mother, and by The Church of Chiara Fumai. The process of selection and inventorying for the purpose of preservation at CRRI was conducted by the curatorial duo Francesco Urbano Ragazzi.

The CRRI – Castello di Rivoli Research Institute is a department created in 2017 with the mission to research, collect, and valorize archival material from the 1960s to the present relating to Italian artists, architects, curators, gallery owners, collectors, and cultural institutions. Through the CRRI, the Castello di Rivoli extends its scientific and academic vocation. The Archival Collections are available to Italian and international scholars and in the context of institutional partnerships. The Archives are also activated by the CRRI itself as living material through temporary exhibitions developed in synergy with the Museum’s Curatorial Department and creative and interdisciplinary dialogues.

In addition to the conception of exhibition projects and the publication of books, catalogues, and documentary videos, the CRRI’s activities include the organization of workshops intended as moments of high professional training, round tables, and study days.

Over the years, CRRI has also been developing into an “archive of creative processes”, bringing together previously unexplored archival collections that document the creative processes behind the making of works of art. This project, dedicated to collecting and promoting artistic processes, aims to establish a distinctive and recognised body of archival material and to encourage new research and scholarship.