Martina Lattuca

Martina Lattuca is an art professional based in Brussels. She holds a Bachelor in Arts and Culture from the University of Maastricht and a Master in Arts and Heritage: Policy, Management and Education. She focuses on feminist and queer curatorial practices, exploring interdisciplinary concepts from feminist studies, queer theories, queer phenomenology and queer geography. She believes that art has a strong influence and power on the identity of a society, both in its construction and representation. She is, thus, interested in how space affects the body, and vice-versa, in the perspective of categories of identity rooted in standardised norms such as patriarchy, heteronormativity and whiteness. Her interests are driven by specific questions such as what art can do about the standards and norms we are so attached to, what art can do to challenge ‘the normal’ and what art can do to discuss social inclusion and social justice in and outside the art space. In her MA thesis, for example, she analysed how the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven uses ‘queering’ as a method to challenge and contest heteronormativity, the expectation of straightness that museums have traditionally served to maintain on an institutional level, and to evaluate how, by engaging in LGBTQ+ community building, a museum like the Van Abbe can become a vector of sexual and social justice. She also reflects on the concepts of audience engagement and public participation by shedding light on the relationships between art and the audience. Specifically, Martina is interested in interrogating the passive position of the viewer within an art space. She wants to question how art and its spaces can connect with an audience with different social and cultural backgrounds, by adding new and alternative perspectives to traditional ways of display and traditional social narratives. Among her experiences, she has worked as a gallery assistant in a contemporary art gallery in Sicily and in an auction house, where she assisted the manager of the modern and contemporary art department in all the tasks of cataloguing and exhibiting the works. Currently, she collaborates with a digital international art gallery as a freelance curator.