Royal Institute of Art
Flaggmansvägen 1
Skeppsholmen
Stockholm
Sweden
T + 46 (0)8 614 40 00
Vice Chancellor Marta Kuzma announces the appointment of Petra Bauer and Alessandro Petti to the standing faculty of the Royal Institute of Art (RIA). Both appointments, corresponding to newly established faculty positions, confirm the RIA’s commitment to expanding the boundaries of artistic and architectural practice, cross-disciplinary research, and critical engagement with society at large.
Petra Bauer, appointed Professor in Fine Art with an Emphasis on the Moving Image, is an artist and filmmaker interested in how aesthetics can be used to challenge contemporary social and political events and processes. Much of her work focuses on how women have collectively self-organised, within and beyond art, with an aim to change political and social structures as well as everyday life. In her practice Bauer has also addressed the materialisation and consequences of colonial world order on our present times. Her works are made in collaboration with existing social and political organisations, where they reflect together on strategies for political action and whether the artwork or film can be considered a political act in itself. Bauer uses feminist strategies and theories in order to critically focus on and politicise conditions of production, authorship, narrative structures, and the choice of aesthetic strategies. Recent projects include Sisters! (2011), A Morning Breeze (2015) and Read the Masks. Tradition Is Not Given (2008–to present).
“As professor my intention is to continue building a platform where we together—faculty, students and other colleagues—can explore, develop, discuss and challenge the role of moving images and social-political art practices today. In other words: how can we critically both address production conditions, representations, distribution and aesthetic strategies, and at the same time relate to existing social and political movements and phenomena.”
Alessandro Petti, appointed Professor in Architecture and Social Justice, has spent the last decade developing an artistic, architectural and research practice, from Palestine,that is both theoretically ambitious and practically engaged in the struggle for justice and equality. He co-founded Campus in Camps with Sandi Hilal, an experimental educational program hosted in Dheisheh Refugee Camp in Bethlehem. In 2007, with Hilal and Eyal Weizman he co-founded Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency (DAAR) in Beit Sahour, Palestine, with the aim to combine an architectural studio and an art residency able to bring together architects, artists, activists, urbanists, film-makers, and curators to work collectively on the subjects of politics and architecture.
“The global dimension of the professorship and its unique intellectual focus on social justice make it an ideal opportunity to explore a theory of practice that is autonomous but engaged with the world. Having established DAAR and Campus in Camps, and realised several architectural projects in refugee camps, I feel this is the right moment to expand and build on the rich insights acquired through my practice. The RIA and its larger intellectual community provide the critical cultural context around which to influence a new generation of practitioners toward the problematics associated to contemporary refugeehood and migration. I hope to contribute to a better understanding of the limit and potentiality of socially engaged artistic practices in the greater struggle for justice and equality.”
About the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm
The Royal Institute of Art is a leading institution of higher education located in Stockholm, offering undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Fine Arts as well as postgraduate studies in Architecture. For more information about the institution and its faculty please visit the website.
