Érica Burini
Érica Burini (1994, São Manuel-SP) is an art historian, researcher, and curator. She holds a degree in Visual Arts and a master’s degree in Art History from Unicamp (Brazil). Since 2019, she has been working in curatorship, organizing exhibitions, mediating discussions, giving lectures, and editing publications. She collaborated with the Instituto Marco do Valle (2019-2022) and completed the Research Training Fellowship at IAC (2024). Currently, she facilitates artist mentoring groups through Clínica Geral and is part of the management team at Ateliê397, an independent contemporary art space. At Ateliê397, she created programs such as ,Recepção397, dedicated to emerging artists, and ,Like a Virgin, which showcases the first video works of established or mid-career artists.
As part of the 70-day SAHA/Ybytu curatorial residency, Burini aims to explore independent art spaces in Istanbul, Izmir, and Diyarbakır, focusing on their role in fostering artistic resistance and political discourse. Her research seeks to map these spaces, understanding their operational models, curatorial practices, and the networks they create to sustain artistic production outside traditional institutional frameworks. Diyarbakır, presents a particularly compelling case for investigating how independent spaces function as platforms for unfiltered artistic expression and sociopolitical engagement. Additionally, she intends to conduct archival research at SALT, particularly in the collection of Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin, whose work intersects conceptual art, institutional critique, and transnational artistic dialogues.
A significant part of Burini’s research will focus on contemporary video art production in Turkey. She is particularly interested in how artists use video and sound as tools for documenting lived experiences, challenging dominant narratives, and constructing counter-discourses within the Global South. As a potential outcome of the residency, she envisions curating a screening event featuring a Turkish and a Brazilian artist, fostering a dialogue between the video art practices of both regions. By bringing together these perspectives, she seeks to highlight shared strategies of resistance and critique while exploring the tensions between protest art and the influence of Global North contemporary art models.