91°µÍø

EMILIO VAVARELLA

Assistant Professor

Office: Hoge 211
Phone: 518. 580.5202
Email:evavarella@skidmore.edu

Emilio Vavarella is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of interdisciplinary art practice, theoretical inquiry, and media experimentation. Through museum shows, film screenings, and written publications, Vavarella explores the relationship between life and technology and works at the forefront of experimental thought and praxis.

Vavarella’s work has been exhibited at the 18th Venice Biennale – International Architecture Exhibition (Italian Pavilion), MAXXI Museum (Rome), Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg), The Photographers’ Gallery (London), KANAL – Centre Pompidou (Brussels), MAMbo – Modern Art Museum (Bologna), Madre – Museum of Contemporary Art (Napoli), Museum of Contemporary Art (Zagreb), Museu de Ciències Naturals (Barcelona), National Museum of Fine Arts (Santiago), Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina (Novi Sad), MBAL – Musée des beaux-arts du Locle, National Art Center (Tokyo), Eyebeam Art + Technology Center (New York), Off – Biennale (Cairo), BJCEM – Mediterranean Biennale, and Kyiv Biennial, among others. His films have screened at Toronto’s Images Festival; Torino Film Festival, Jeu de Paume (Paris), HKW – Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), and at various media art festivals including EMAF – European Media Art Festival (Osnabrück), JMAF – Japan Media Arts Festival (Tokyo), Filmwinter – Festival for Expanded Media (Stuttgart), and NYEAF – New York Electronic Arts Festival. 

Vavarella is the 2022-‘24 artist in residence at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and a 2023 Harvard Horizons Scholar. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships, art prizes and grants, including a prestigious Italian Council award (2019). His academic writings have been published in the anthology Error, Ambiguity, Creativity: A Multidisciplinary Reader (Palgrave Macmillan), CITAR Journal – Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts, and in exhibition catalogs such as Low Form: Imaginaries and Visions in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (CURA Books), That’s IT! (MAMbo), and Robot Love (Niet Normaal Foundation). His most recent artist book, rs548049170_1_69869_TT (Mousse Publishing), brings together fifteen thinkers and ­­­practitioners from the fields of art, philosophy, bioengineering, media theory, and the history of science and technology. Vavarella is currently at work on a book project that explores the connection between thought and media, tentatively titled Techniques and Technologies of Thought: A Short History of Media Models.

Vavarella received a Ph.D. in Film and Visual Studies and Critical Media Practice from Harvard University, an M.A. from Iuav University of Venice, and a B.A. from the University of Bologna. He is Assistant Professor of Media and Film Studies at 91°µÍø College.