Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo presents a renewed format for its 19th edition of the Young Curators Residency Programme (YCRP) Torino
Established by the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in 2007, the Young Curators Residency Programme (YCRP) is a curatorial research residency in Italy with a twofold objective of developing the professional and critical skills of emerging curators, while promoting knowledge of the Italian art scene internationally. The programme offers three selected candidates with the opportunity to meet and work with Italian artists, furthering the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s commitment to supporting contemporary art in Italy as well as emerging curatorial practice internationally. The research residency—which includes curatorial visits to artist studios, museums, and institutions across Italy under the guidance of an Italian curator—culminates in an exhibition curated with the support of the team at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. YCRP is recognised both nationally and internationally, thanks to the quality of its training and the achievements of its alumni, many of whom have gone on to hold prominent positions in museums and institutions worldwide.
Now in its 19th edition, YCRP Torino introduces a new format to critically reflect on past editions of the residency while maintaining and adapting its function to better respond to the needs of an ever-changing landscape of curatorial practice and artistic research. This new chapter of YCRP Torino will be tailored to the specific interests and research topics of the selected curators, providing an updated platform for them to develop meaningful relationships with art professionals working in Italy.
The new format of YCRP will consist of three interconnected stages. The first month of the programme will be dedicated to in-depth research, including portfolio reviews, online studio visits, and lectures with Italian curators, art historians and critics, introducing participants to the local context. Conceived of as a “toolbox,” this first stage will prepare the curators for the second stage: the travel-residency, during which they will spend more than two months travelling across the country. Each trip will be organised according to the interests of each curator and overseen by the Italian coordinator of the programme, who will advise their research. During this period, participants will meet with artists and art professionals while visiting key institutions in order to construct a broader perspective of the art ecosystem in Italy. Finally, YCRP will culminate in three exhibition projects—each organised by an individual curator-in-residence—to offer three distinct perspectives of the Italian art scene.
With this new format, the Young Curators Residency Programme is designed to encourage a closer and deeper collaboration between emerging international curators and emerging Italian artists, fostering an ongoing dialogue structured around shared interests within a site-specific context.
The curators selected for the 19th edition of YCRP Torino are: Kittima Chareeprasit (Thailand), Yueh-Ning Lee (Taiwan), and Ursula Pokorny (Austria). The coordinator of this edition is Michele Bertolino. The curators were selected by a jury consisting of Eva Fabbris, director at MADRE - Museum of Contemporary Art Donnaregina, Naples, and Krist Gruijthuijsen, curator and art critic, Berlin.
The selection of participants is conducted in collaboration with renowned international curatorial programmes, including: Royal College of Art, London; Graduate Programme, Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College, New York; Curatorial Program, De Appel, Amsterdam; CuratorLab, Konstfack University of Arts, Stockholm; Independent Study Program (ISP), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; MFA Curating, Goldsmiths University of London; MA Curatorial Practice, California College of the Arts, San Francisco; MAS/CAS Curating, Zurich University of the Arts; Universität für Angewandet Kunst, Wien. In recent years, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo has also partnered with new institutions to support a greater pool of candidates with the aim of expanding its international representation. In 2021, the Fondazione established an ongoing collaboration with the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) in Shanghai, in which the curatorial nominating committee of RAM proposes candidates from East and Southeast Asia to participate in YCRP. For the 2025 edition of YCRP, the committee – led by Artistic Director X Zhu-Nowell and coordinated by Curator Tiantian Xu at RAM—was composed of Alia Swastika, Esther Lu, Merv Espina, Wang Weiwei, and Sabih Ahmed.
Since 2023, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo has partnered with Independent Curators International (ICI) to nominate their Curatorial Intensive alumni for YCRP, opening the programme to Africa-based curators for the first time. Founded in 1975, ICI produces exhibitions, events, publications, research, and professional development opportunities for curators and other audiences around the world. Since 2010, ICI has provided emerging curators from around the world with unique professional development opportunities through the Curatorial Intensive, which has taken place internationally in more than 25 cities, and since 2013 annually in Africa, in Addis Ababa, Accra, Cape Town, Dakar, Kampala, Johannesburg, and Marrakech.
The 19th edition of YCRP Torino runs from January to May 2025, and concludes with the opening of three exhibitions on May 24th, 2025 at Palazzo Re Rebaudengo, the historic headquarters of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Guarene (CN).
Curators
Yueh-Ning Lee
Yueh-Ning Lee is an independent curator and researcher based between Taipei and London. She holds an MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London (2023), where she later worked as a Junior Fellow in the MFA Curating programme (2023–2024). Lee’s background is shaped by her work experience of exhibition-making in public art and off-site projects in Taiwan. Her curatorial practice engages with time-based media, performance, and installation, approached by the methods of interdependence, care, and slowness. Her current research investigates the intersections of body politics, ecology, and technology, with a particular focus on vulnerability and precarity as regenerative capacities within the fluid self. She is also interested in how technological acceleration and Capitalism reshape emotional landscapes and the relationships between humans and more-than-human agencies.
Recent projects include: Welcome to my Crib (GUTS PROJECTS, London, 2024); Lavender, Hibernation and Neon (The Crypt Gallery, London, 2024); and Those Who Dream, Dine (Upper Ankyle, London, 2023). As part of the curatorial duo Otherwise, she co-curated With(out) Language: In conversation with Karin Keisu and Josse Thuresson (Art/Work Association, Auto Italia, London, 2023) and (…) Forgot to Remember to Forget (…)(Gerald Moore Gallery, London, 2022). Lee is also the co-initiator of Exhausted Feminist Hybrid Speciesreading group, a peer-led platform that fosters collective learning and critical review centred around eco- and cyberfeminism.
Ursula Pokorny
Ursula Pokorny is a curator from Vienna, Austria. Her research focuses on architectural heritage and artists’ estates. Until recently, she was Assistant Curator at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, overseeing a retrospective of Yoko Ono in collaboration with Tate Modern in London. Previously, Ursula has worked for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Kunsthalle Basel, Galerie Martin Janda, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Ursula holds an M.A. from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, New York and a B.A. from the University of Applied Arts, Vienna.
Kittima Chareeprasit
Kittima Chareeprasit is a curator at MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum in Chiang Mai and MAIELIE in Khon Kaen, Thailand. Since 2016, she has co-founded Waiting You Curator Lab, an experimental curatorial workshop and artists’ book publishing house. Her interests lie in contemporary art and culture, focusing on critical history, social, and political issues. She collaborates on several projects with emerging and established artists within the realm of Southeast Asian art and its cultural context.
Her selected recent curatorial work includes Art for Impact at Asia-Pacific ministerial conference on the beijing 30 review, United Nation ROAP (2024) Dreamworld #dreammantra at MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum (2023) and Dreamday at Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok (2022) both solo exhibitions by Mit Jai-inn. Additionally, A Minor History by Apichatpong Weerasethakul at MAIELIE, Khon Kaen (2022), Watch and Chill: Streaming Art to Your Homes, a free subscription-based art streaming platform curated in collaboration with the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea, the Contemporary Art and Design Museum in Manila, and M+ West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong (2021), Solo exhibitions of Pinaree Sanpitak include House Calls at 100 Tonson Foundation, Bangkok (2020), and Breast Stupa Cookery: The World Turns Upside Down at Nova Contemporary, Bangkok (2020), Temporal Topography: MAIIAM’s New Acquisitions; from 2010 to Present at MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum (2019), and In Search of Other Times: Reminiscence of Things Collected at JWD Art Space in Bangkok (2019). Kittima also runs a publication series, The Museum of Unfortunate Events (2017-), an open-ended volume of artist books featuring works from Thai and international artists whose creations are related to personal and collective memories of society from different events. She received her MA in Curating and Collections from Chelsea College of Arts, London.
Coordinator
Michele Bertolino (he/him) is a curator and researcher based between Turin and Rome. He currently collaborates with the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo as the coordinator of the Young Curators Residency Programme (YCRP) and tutor of their curatorial course CAMPO - Corso di studi e pratiche curatoriali. He will curate VIVONO. Art and feelings, HIV/AIDS in Italy. 1982–1996, scheduled to open at Centro Pecci in Prato in October of 2025. He is also the curator of CONTROLUCE: STORIES OF BEAUTY, a series of artist videos and films for Palazzo Gucci in Florence, as well as the editor of Porpora, a photobook featuring the work of Lina Pallotta. He has previously collaborated with several institutions, including New York University (NYU) in New York, the Museo d’Arte Moderna (MAMbo) in Bologna, and Last Tango in Zurich. In 2022, he co-authored and published Albe e tramonti in Praiano* with Giulia Crispiani. From 2019 and 2021, he was Assistant Curator of the 2020 Quadriennale di Roma, titled FUORI at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni. In 2020, he was a visiting lecturer at LAB.ZONE PETROLIO, a class led by Lili Reynaud-Dewar at HEAD Genève. From 2018–19, he was Junior Curator at the research center The Institute of Things to Come, for which he later curated the research programme "Guerrilla against the Uncessing Hostilities of the Livings" in 2020–2021. In 2016, he founded the curatorial collective Il Colorificio with Bernardo Follini, Giulia Gregnanin, and Sebastiano Pala. His writings have been published in NERO, Flash Art, and other magazines. Bertolino graduated with a degree in philosophy of art at the University of Turin and participated in the 2015–2016 edition of CAMPO.
