Faculty Profile

Giovanni Aloi

Faculty, Online Courses

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Giovanni Aloi is an author, curator, and educator specializing in the histories of collecting and the representation of nature in art. He studied History of Art and Art Practice in Milan and moved to London in 1997 to further his studies at Goldsmiths University where he obtained a Postgraduate Diploma in Art History, a Master in Visual Cultures, and a Ph.D. on the subject of natural history in contemporary art. Aloi also owns an MA in education from UCL in London. He taught art history at Queen Mary University, Roehampton University, and Goldsmiths University. He currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Sotheby’s Institute of Art. He has curated exhibitions in the US and abroad, contributes to BBC radio programs, and is involved in museum education programs at the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been translated into Italian, Chinese, French, Russian, Polish, and Spanish. Aloi is the founder and Editor in Chief of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, the co-editor for the University of Minnesota Press book series ‘Art after Nature’, and USA correspondent for Esse Magazine.

Details

Exhibitions

Earthly Observatory – 2021
Exhibition on art and the Anthropocene curated in collaboration with Dr. Andrew Yang for the Faculty Curated Projects Program at SAIC

Digital Animalities – 2018
Exhibition on animals and the digital interface held in Toronto at John B. Aird Gallery and Contact Gallery between October 30th and December 15th, 2018. Commissioned by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Plants, Animals, Machine, Object! – 2015
Program of short films co-curated for Sector 2337, Chicago

Femme Animot – 2012
Cambridge University, exhibition organized with conference ISAZ2012.

Animals on Film – 2012
Program of short films curated for ISAZ2012, Cambridge

Animal Acoustics – 2012
Online exhibition in conjunction with the publication of Antennae’s issue n.27 titled ‘The Acoustic Animal’

Speaking and Presentations

Organizer and moderator: Earthly Observatory—Acknowledging Place, Acknowledging People
Panel with artists Edgar Heap of Birds and JeeYeun Leeco-moderated by Andrew Yang.

Organizer and moderator: Earthly Observatory—The Ethics of Observation
Panel with artists Mark Dion and Zoe Strecker co-moderated by Andrew Yang.

Invited Speaker: Art in Context: Critical Discussion. Panel about artists Zachari Logan and Ross Bleckner. With panelists Sur Rodney, Sarah Stanners, Joseph Wolin, moderated by Robert Enright. Organized by Wave Hill Museum, New York.

June 2021
Invited Speaker: Silenced Nature: The Taxidermy of the Living panel with artists Meryl McMaster, Sara Angelucci, moderated by Bénédicte Ramade for the McCord Museum in Montral, Canada.

June 2021
Invited Speaker: Toward a New Way of Being with Plants Symposium. Presentation title: ‘Phytopoetics: Domestic Biosemiotics against plant objectification and capitalism’

April 2021
Keynote: Animaterialities Symposium organized by Delaware University. Presentation: Speculative Taxidermy: Indexicality, Vulnerability and Representation’

April 2021
Panel Discussion at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. April 2021as part of the exhibition Unearthed: Photography’s Roots September 2020-August 2021

March 2021
Invited Speaker: ‘Vegetal Attunements: Thinking Models Against Philosophical Totalizations’ for the Environmental Humanities
LARCA, Université de Paris, France

January-June 2021
Invited Speaker: Photographing Italy
A series of 6 talks on the history of Italian Photography commissioned by the Italian Institute of Culture in Chicago

December 2020
Invited Speaker: Lucian Freud: From Symbolism to Truth
New York Botanic Garden
New York

September 2020
Invited Speaker: Experts Panel—plenary session and panel discussion at MIT BioSummit Conference 0.4
MIT
Boston Massachusetts

September 2020
Invited Speaker: Plants in Art: Symbolism, Objectification, and Anthropocentrism
Museo La Tertulia
Cali, Colombia

August 2020
Invited Speaker: On Archiving Eden: In conversation with artist Dornith Doherty
Science Gallery Bangaluru
Bangaluru, India

Publications

Aloi, G. Lucian Freud Herbarium (New York: Prestel) 2019

Aloi, G. Speculative Taxidermy: Natural History, Animal Surfaces, and Art in the Anthropocene (New York: Columbia University Press) 2017

Aloi, G. Art & Animals, part of the series ‘Art &…’ (London: I B Tauris) 2011

Aloi, G. (Co-Author) Bird: Exploring the Ornitological World (London: Phaidon) 2021

Aloi, G. and McHugh, S. (Eds.) Posthumanism in Art and Science: A Reader (New York: Columbia University Press) 2021

Aloi, G. (Co-Author) Flower: Exploring the World in Bloom (London: Phaidon) 2020

Aloi, G. (Consultant Editor and Co-Author) Animal: Exploring the Zoological World (London: Phaidon) 2019

Aloi, G. (Ed.) Botanical Speculations (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars) 2019

Aloi, G. (Editor and Principal Author) Why Look at Plants? (Leiden: Brill) 2018

Aloi (Ed.) Antennae 10: A Decade of Art and the Non-Human 07-17,
(AntennaeProject/Forlaget 284) 2017

Courses Taught

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