Narrative Perspectives for Contemporary Art

The project Narrative Perspectives for Contemporary Art: Brera and Its Living Protagonists. Self-Portraits, Forms of Representation and Storytelling develops a model for narrating contemporary art through the voices and works of living artists who have studied or taught at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera. It establishes a progressively expanding mapping of artists whose careers achieve national and international visibility, highlighting Brera’s continuing role as a vital centre for contemporary artistic practice and thought.

At the core of the project is the interview, conceived not merely as a documentary tool but as a form of dialogic research. Each interview is structured around the artist’s specific creative and theoretical concerns and is paired with an analysis of selected works exemplifying their artistic trajectory. Together, these materials offer an in-depth understanding of the ideas, processes, and personal narratives that inform artistic production today.

The project collects, organises, and disseminates information derived from direct oral testimonies, making these materials accessible through the IartNET digital platform.

Building on a critical reflection on the Italian state standards for cataloguing contemporary art, the project publishes an initial corpus of 24 interviews accompanied by selected artworks. This initial nucleus serves as a prototype for a broader, continuously expandable archive that develops a new methodology for narrating contemporary art, one that recognises the artist’s voice and self-representation as essential sources for understanding creative processes and the cultural dynamics of the present.

Actions

• Identify and select artists: map and select living artists connected to Brera whose work has gained significant national or international visibility, establishing the first core of the archive.
• Conduct and record interviews: prepare, conduct, and video-record structured interviews centred on each artist’s research concerns, methodologies, and forms of self-representation.
• Analyse and document selected artworks: select representative works for each artist and produce critical analyses that contextualise their practice within contemporary artistic debates.
• Prepare cataloguing materials: organise interviews and artworks into cataloguing units aligned with contemporary art standards, integrating descriptive, technical, and interpretative fields.
• Digitise and archive materials: edit, classify, and upload interviews and related documentation onto the IartNET platform, ensuring accessibility and interoperability.
• Develop the prototype archive: structure the first nucleus of 25 artists as a model for an open and expandable contemporary art archive centred on artists’ voices and narrative self-construction.
• Design dissemination strategies: develop communication outputs, including short video excerpts, thematic clusters, and curated presentations, to circulate the project within Brera and across the IartNET network.