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‘I have participcated in the past in art exhibitions and artistic projects that focused on the question of utopia, but I never experiened one that took seriously the inventor of the concept and the place: Thomas More. While visiting Mechelen, I discovered that More also visited the city exactly five hundred years ago, in 1515, and that during his stay in Mechelen and Antwerp, he wrote the bulk of his book on this ideal society located in the new world. The way in which he composed the book, also with the help of Erasmus, is something that fascinates me profoundly. As a person More also connects to the theme of the biennale, which focuses on the relationship between monsters and martyrs. More died a martyr, but some of the actions he did as lord chancellor of England qualify him as monstrous. He also had a special relationship with jesters and fools, which is something that led me to choose Fooling Utopia as the motto of the biennale.’

‘Well, there is no direct link. For me it’s a curatorial statement about the kind of cultural and political engagement I’m interested in. Of course once I started talking to the artists I was interested in working with, the links sprung up. Like when I asked Nedko Solakov and he answered that he made a work in 1990 called Encyclopedia Utopia, which focuses on Thomas More’s Utopia. Or others like Grazia Toderi and Ana Prvacki with whom we decided to read closely More’s book.’

‘It’s always difficult to say this about specific artists and not about the others in an exhibition you are curating, but there is a historical piece by Gilberto Zorio from 1971 of which the title is È Utopia, la Realtà, È Rivelazione. This can be translated as Reality is Utopia is Revelation. It’s a beautiful piece that plays with light and darkness and connects the question of Utopia to a kind of spiritual dimension. Also very important for me is the performance piece Piano Destructions by Andrea Büttner as it addresses the question of the martyrdom of pianos in the history of modern art, while providing a counterweight to that tradition in the recording of a very unusual piano performance by nine women. The art collective Slavs and Tatars has a complex installation, which invites the visitors to reflect on the tradition that Thomas More’s book belongs to, the literary genre mirrors for princes, but from the perspective of medieval Arab culture.’

‘16 of the 21 participating artists have made works specifically for CONTOUR 7. From the beginning I knew I wanted to take this risk so that the process of making the show was shared with the artists.’

‘Yes, the Hof Van Busleyden is a Renaissance building where More stayed during his visit to Mechelen. The Vlietenkelder is a former underground bomb shelter and De Noker is a former monastery where the mentally ill of Mechelen were taken care by the order of the Alexians. In general I tried to tie the narratives of the venues with those of the artworks.’

‘Yes it’s the first time I curate an exhibition of this scale entirely on my own. I was one of the agents of the last dOCUMENTA and I had several different responsibilities in that context, so the amount of work is comparable. But CONTOUR 7 reflects my own thinking more, though. Recently, I curated a major show at BOZAR in Brussels called The Yellow Side of Sociality. Italian Artists in Europe, which focused on the work of 16 Italian artists most of which are living outside their country in different European capitals, as is also my case.’