shorelines

Valentina Amenta holds a PhD in Gender Studies and Comparative Literature from the University of Rome La Sapienza. Her research explores Southern Italy through a gender, queer, postcolonial, and decolonial perspective. She is currently a research fellow at the University for Foreigners of Siena, working on the project ARCOMAP: Mapping Rainbow Cultural Heritage in Tuscany. In 2023, she was awarded the “Liana Borghi” research grant (áltera series, ETS) for her editorial project Queer Meridionalism, forthcoming in 2026. Her recent publications include a critical analysis of the works of Maria Occhipinti (2023, ETS), a study of the poetic corpus of Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto (2024, Ledizioni), and the chapter “Queer Meridionalism: Dwelling on the Threshold” in Queer in Italy 2 (2025, ETS). In 2024, she published the book Femminismo terrone with Edizioni Tlon.

Maria Silvia D’Avolio (she/her) is a postdoctoral researcher with interdisciplinary training and experience in architecture, sociology, and gender studies. She has worked as a researcher at various universities, including the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, King’s College London and the University of Portsmouth. She had taught sociology, criminology and gender studies in the UK at the University of Sussex and the University of Brighton. Marias is currently a Research Fellow at the Swiss Institute in Rome, where she is working on a project that explores the influence of left-wing and feminist women architects and urban planners on the profession between the 1960s and 1980s.

Jahan Khajavi (Fresno, 1986) is “the best kind of pervert” (Farid Matuk) who composes “wildly amusing and explicit queer poetry” (Hamish Bowles, Vogue)  “with elements of swagger and sex” (Rob McLennan) that “luxuriates in the labor of the real” (PJ Lombardo, Tripwire) and “juggles truly absurd comedy and frank body talk with overwhelming tenderness and genuine corporeal joy” (Louis Fratino, Mousse). Khajavi’s “fabulous, fierce first collection” (Moira Egan) Feast of the Ass (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2023), is “one of the most unique books of recent memory” (Johannes Göransson), which “at once flourishes and makes a flourish of classical Persian forms” (Joyelle McSweeney) “in which the sacred and profane fuck on the page” (After 8 Books) “fragrant of jasmine and trace fecal matter” (Charlie Stuip, Grotto).

Clovis Maillet fellow 2024-2025 (1981, France) is a historian and artist. He has published La parenté hagiographique XIII-XVe s. (2014) and Les genres fluides (2020). He has edited several issues of scientific journals while conducting research on the uses of history in contemporary art(Witch TV, 2021; Un Moyen Âge émancipateur, with Thomas Golsenne, 2021). Clovis Maillet co-wrote the show Medieval Crack with the Foulles collective. With Louise Hervé, Clovis Maillet has created performances, installations and films.

Foster Mickley is an artist and poet who gives to warmth and wonder reverent and tender forms. His practice holds that shared imagination revitalizes, that art expands and delights the possible.

Among his collaborations – Organizing Resources Together (ORT, NYC), Diamonds are Forever founded by Dumb Type co-founder Teiji Furuhashi, Antibodies Collective (Kyoto), Neon Book Club (Tokyo). He was a Research Fellow at the Kyoto Institute of Contemporary Arts in 2022, and the first artist in residence at the Research Center, Division of Forest Ecology of Kyoto University in 2023. He holds a Master of Journalism at Medill School in Chicago, Fine Arts at Columbia University and photography with Magnum Photo in Paris.

Past exhibitions include solo shows at Munch Gallery in New York, Horenji Temple and Kyoto University of the Arts in Kyoto, group shows in Arles Voies Off, Korea National University of the Arts, Harlem NYC Ilon Gallery, Berlin Foto Kiez, Tokyo Reminders Project Stronghold, Kyotographie International photography Festival / KG+, Festival La Chambre Verte with Centre Pompidou and National Site of Scenic Beauty Murin-an in Kyoto. His photographs and writing were published in the Asahi Shimbun, Real Kyoto / ICA Kyoto and Pioneer Works, NYC. His collection of poetry, listening, was published in 2024.

Foster Mickley and Isabelle Olivier are collaborating since 2020. Their collaborations include in waves (2021), through the clouds (2022), in bloom (2022, 2025), cruising utopia (2022), and Q(WE)R International Culture Festival (2022), black cat day dream (2023), shorelines, 2021, 2025. In the summer of 2023, they created black cat day dream, an artist-run ecological space in Kyoto. In the winter, they found black cat day dream press, together with Japanese-Papua-New Guinean publisher and writer Hideko G. Ono. In 2024, they were Recipients of the 2-12 Residency Program in Visual Arts of Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris.

Isabelle Olivier engages with international development, cultural diplomacy and the arts. Her practice revolves around inclusive and supporting space, for forms of “anticipatory illuminations” and shared futures. She brings together artists and scholars, public servants and activists, galleries and temples, to contribute to producing transforming realities, and relating communities, constellations.

Between the development of Hors Pistes Tokyo with Centre Pompidou in 2011 and the organization of Q(WE)R International Cultures Festival in 2022, she has been a regional attachee for French Embassy at Kansai French Institute in Kyoto (2012-2016) responsible for French artist in residency Villa Kujoyama, an international producer for artist Kohei Nawa and choreographer Damien Jalet (2018-2022), a programmer for Nuit Blanche Kyoto (2012-2016, 2019). Other engagements include the founding support and management of Kyotographie International Photography Festival, multiple collaborations with Kyoto Experiment Performing Arts Festival, with Asia Now Paris Art Fair and exhibitions of National Living Treasures from France and Japan in Kyoto, Tokyo and Beijing. 

Foster Mickley and Isabelle Olivier are collaborating since 2020. Their collaborations include in waves (2021), through the clouds (2022), in bloom (2022, 2025), cruising utopia (2022), and Q(WE)R International Culture Festival (2022), black cat day dream (2023), shorelines, 2021, 2025. In the summer of 2023, they created black cat day dream, an artist-run ecological space in Kyoto. In the winter, they found black cat day dream press, together with Japanese-Papua-New Guinean publisher and writer Hideko G. Ono. In 2024, they were Recipients of the 2-12 Residency Program in Visual Arts of Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris.

Selby Wynn Schwartz is the recipient of the 2025 Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize in Literature at the American Academy in Rome and a 2024 Fellowship in creative writing from the Dora Maar Cultural Center in Ménerbes. She is the author of After Sappho (Galley Beggar Press), which was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and shortlisted for the 2023 Orwell Prize in Political Fiction, the 2023 James Tait Black Prize in Fiction, and the 2024 Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction; it has now been translated into eleven languages. Her first book, The Bodies of Others: Drag Dances and Their Afterlives (University of Michigan Press), won the 2020 Sally Banes Prize from the American Society of Theatre Research; her novella A Life in Chameleons (Reflex Press) received the 2021 Reflex Press Novella Award. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley.

Francesco Urbano Ragazzi is a curatorial duo composed of Francesco Ragazzi (International Ph.D. in Philosophy of Art, adjunct professor of Aesthetics) and Francesco Urbano (Ph.D. in Film & Media Studies). They have developed an extensive range of production strategies and invented exhibition formats working with pioneers such as Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Goldsmith, Jennifer West, Cheryl Donegan, Haroon Mirza, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Tsai Ming Liang and others. Establishing new alliances between art and reality, the team has not only operated in museums and academic contexts but also in a wide variety of physical and mediatic spaces. Francesco Urbano Ragazzi was commissioned with projects for, among others: MMCA (Seoul), Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo), Missoni (New York), CERN (Geneva), Bucharest Biennale, Maraya Art Centre (Sharjah), Centro Ricerca Castello di Rivoli (Turin), ISCP (New York), Reykjavik International Film Festival, Centre d’Art Contemporain Gèneve, La Loge (Brussels), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), Institut Français (Paris), Ikon (Birmingham), Futura (Prague), Ruya Foundation (Baghdad), Emirates Foundation (Abu Dhabi).

In 2012 they curated Io Tu Lui Lei, the first institutional exhibition about the cultural legacy of LGBTQ+ movements in Italy, with the support of the National Ministry of Equal Opportunities. From 2017 to 2022 the team directed the archive of feminist artist Chiara Fumai, also organizing the main retrospective exhibition of her work and comprehensive publication. In 2021, the duo co-edited FUORI!!! 1971-1974 (Nero Editions), an award-winning anthology dedicated to the first LGBTQ+ magazine in Italian history. Between 2022 and 2023, the duo directed the 17th Lofoten Biennial in Norway and Jonas Mekas 100! in Italy, the international program celebrating the centenary of the hugely influential Lithuanian filmmaker. In 2025, they were selected as the first Italian Curatorial Fellows at the American Academy in Rome.

The duo held lectures and seminars in academic contexts such as Collège International de Philosophie, Yale School of Architecture, UC Davis Humanities Institute, Nordland School of Arts and Film, Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, ZHdK Zurich, Universiteit Antwerpen. Their words have been published in magazines such as Flash Art, Purple, NERO, South as a State of Mind, Mousse, CURA, and Spike.

Lise Wajeman (1973, France), 2024–2025 Villa Medici fellow, is a professor of comparative literature at Université Paris Cité. She works on Renaissance literature and art, and notably published L’Amour de l’art. Erotique de l’artiste et du spectateur au XVIe siècle (Droz, 2015). Since 2016, she has also been engaged with contemporary literature as a critic: she has published numerous articles in Mediapart and is a regular contributor to the podcast L’Esprit critique.