Cory John Scozzari: CHAPEL

April 27th, 2022 at 6 p. m.
UMPRUM, nám. Jana Palacha 80, Praha 1, lecture room No. 115

The lecture will be held in English.

The event is part of the UMPRUM Visiting Artist Studio

Chapel is a talk by artist and curator Cory John Scozzari about his project Cordova and his process of working with artists. It charts his developing interest in thinking about the exhibition space as a sacred site of communication, and draws parallels between the role of a curator and that of a clergy member.  The talk touches on his own biography and the role religion plays/ has played in shaping his worldview, and also ask questions about the ineffable, transubstantiation, queerness and incompatibility in belief. 

Cory John Scozzari (b. 1988, Florida) is a curator, artist and writer. He is the founding director of Cordova, a curatorial project initiated in 2016 in Vienna, currently located in Barcelona. He worked as curator from 2015-2019 at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) in Vienna and Madrid. He was a founding member and co-director of Jupiter Woods, London/Vienna from 2014–16. He received his MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths in 2015, and BFA in Photography and Art History from SCAD in 2010. 
Recent curatorial residencies include HIAP in Helsinki in 2018 and SOMA in Mexico City in 2019. His writing and criticism has appeared in online and print publications such as Rhizome, Mousse, Spike and Texte Zur Kunst.  Some recent exhibitions curated at Cordova are Bruno Zhu: I am not afraid. and Jurgen Baladiga: Hover. Some recent curatorial projects offsite include Treunos y Luz, a public program about god and belief at La Casa Encendida, Madrid and Mere Skyn,a group show at CAPC, Bordeaux.

Photograph of a painting of a cross and two angels praying, painted on a metal pillar in a disused horse stable in Madrid by an unknown tenant before the building was taken on by a commercial gallery.